House body to probe government radar project

MANILA, Philippines - A Leyte congressman and former Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) executive said yesterday he will lead an investigation into the bidding process and award of a $200-million radar systems modernization project by the Arroyo administration.

Rep. Roger Mercado, chairman of the House committee on transportation and communications, said there is a need to look into the allegations that irregularities marked the bidding process conducted by the DOTC for the supply of the radar systems.

“We will seriously look into this. These are serious allegations and we will get to the bottom of this seemingly anomalous deal,” Mercado, a former DOTC assistant secretary handling legal affairs, said.

The project, which aims to modernize the navigational system of the country’s airports, was funded through a concessionary loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

There were four interested bidders – Thales-Sumitomo Corp., Indra-Marubeni Corp., Selex-Kanematsu Corp. and Raytheon-Sojitz Corp.

Of the four bidders, Thales-Sumitomo emerged the winner for the first phase of the contract worth $70 million (approximately P3.2 billion) because all of the other bidders were disqualified or dropped out of the bidding process.

Mercado said he was disturbed by the reported “bias” in the bidding process because the company that won the contract allegedly has a “history” of cornering the projects bid out by the DOTC and its line agencies, despite its supposed ties to blacklisted contractor Thomson CSF NCS of France, which failed to deliver a P1-billion contract to install a global maritime distress signal system for the DOTC.

DOTC Secretary Jose de Jesus recently admitted that Thales was being investigated for its alleged connection to Thomson.

De Jesus said Thales had already denied it was formerly Thomson CSF NCS of France. The DOTC chief said they were still looking into the history of Thales despite this denial.

Former senator Manuel Roxas II previously castigated Thomson for failing to complete the installation of the global marine distress safety system (GMDSS) that could have helped prevent sea disasters such as the sinking of the M/V Princess of the Stars off the coast of Sibuyan Island in Romblon province on June 21, 2008.

In a Senate resolution he filed in 2008, Roxas questioned why the contract forged by the DOTC and Thomson CSF NCS-France in 1998 for the purchase of the system did not materialize.

Under a deal between the two parties, 19 GMDSS stations were supposed to be put up nationwide, but a report by the Commission on Audit in 2008 showed that the French firm was not able to deliver its end of the deal.