Tesda confirms overpriced deal

MANILA, Philippines - The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) has confirmed serious irregularities in the purchase of training equipment worth P302.1 million with a lone supplier.

TESDA has also identified 14 officials liable for the alleged highly anomalous transactions.

TESDA officer-in-charge Rogelio “Roger” Peyuan said the investigating committee tasked to look into the overpriced deal has already submitted its report to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for further investigation and prosecution of the erring officials.

Peyuan said the 14 TESDA officials have forgotten or developed “insomnia” regarding their involvement in the awarding of some P302.1 million worth of equipment contract to a lone supplier identified as V.G. Roxas Co. Inc. in 2008.

“Unfortunately, it appears that all of them have developed amnesia during the investigation on how they came out with their price estimates on the equipment,” Peyuan told reporters in a press conference at the Bayview Hotel in Manila yesterday.

Members of the TESDA bids and awards committee, which awarded the contract, were all placed under investigation.

TESDA said the price estimates of the overpriced equipment were near the winning bid prices submitted by V.G. Roxas Co. Inc.

Peyuan also disclosed that they found alleged bad faith on the part of V.G. Roxas Co., which immediately delivered the overpriced training equipment that TESDA purchased, while failing to deliver the equipment that were found to be “underpriced.”

“There are many angles of bad faith on the part of the supplier,” Peyuan said.

The anomalous purchase of training equipment was exposed by the Commission on Audit (COA) in its 2009 report where it found that as much as 4,000 percent of some baking equipment for training courses of TESDA training schools were overpriced.

However, Peyuan revealed that the investigating committee found no overprice in the entire training equipment purchases from V.G. Roxas as also discovered by COA, saying that while there were some overpriced equipment, there were also some items that were underpriced.

Unfortunately, Peyuan said V.G. Roxas had delivered the overpriced items instead of the less costly ones for bigger profit.

Because of this, Peyuan said TESDA would continue to withhold or “embargo” the payment of a P39.8 million balance to V.G Roxas.

The amount covered the cost for the undelivered items and those that were found to have “deficiencies,” Peyuan added.