Council wants bidding for CCMC stopped

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu City Council wants the bidding for a new city hospital building suspended as it looks into the particulars of the failed bidding for the project’s first phase.

Mayor Michael Rama declared a “failure of bidding” for the first phase last year and the council said it wants the previous Bids and Awards Committee to explain why it happened.

In a privilege speech yesterday, Councilor Eugenio Gabuya said the city is not ready for rebidding.

He said the council needs to know BAC’s evaluation of the second winning bidder after the first winning bidder was disqualified.

Last year, Cebu’s WTG Construction and Development Corp. and Manila’s E.M. Ureta won the bid at P274,975,904 but they were post-disqualified for allegedly being “non-responsive” after BAC found out that the documents submitted contained “discrepancies and false information.”

“All of a sudden, gi-declare nga failure of bidding. Is this the recommendation of the Bids and Awards Committee? Og mao man gani ni, unsa may reason?” Gabuya said.

He wants to know if the second, third and fourth bidders submitted “false information.”

“If I found out nga kining mga contractors nag-submit og false information, I must say that we have a legislative intervention to blacklist these contractors in future construction of Cebu City,” Gabuya said.

After the failed bidding, Rama created a new BAC for infrastructure.

Through an executive order, he appointed his chief of staff Dominic Diño, City Planning and Development Office chief Kenneth Carmelita Enriquez, budget officer Marietta Gumia, city administrator Lucelle Mercado, Department of Engineering and Public Works planning division chief Engineer Joel Reston, city attorney Jerone Castillo and Ferdinand Cañete to the committee.

These members have convened and elected Castillo as chairman, replacing City Engineer Jose Marie Poblete. Reston, member of the former BAC-technical working group, was elected as vice chairman.

Poblete, the BAC-infrastructure chairman, and his regular member Daisy Villa and representative of the “end user” or requisitioner Councilor Mary Ann Delos Santos, chairwoman of the CCMC ad hoc committee, were terminated.

Poblete and De los Santos have voted to disqualify WTG Construction and Development Corp. and Manila’s E.M. Ureta October last year.

Gabuya said the city government has no money to fund the P600 million needed for the first phase of the project.

“Dinhi ko nakuyawan kay if we recall, in 2014, this Sanggunian has approved and appropriated P300 million for the construction of CCMC and just recently for this year, another P300 million for this project, with a total of P600 million,” he said.

Gabuya said that last year, the P300 million the City Council appropriated for the construction of CCMC was utilized by the executive department to fund the city’s payables like the financial assistance for senior citizens, among others.

He said the other P300 million is yet to be collected.

“In other words, we need to raise P600 million for the construction, pero wala pa gihapon tay kwarta kay, as of now, we are still short of P500 million already,” he said, adding, that the Rama administration has not reached its estimated income for four consecutive years. — /JMO (FREEMAN)