Dear Mr. President,
At the outset, let me doff my hat to you for waging a war against corruption through your battlecry "Tuwid na Daan". I know you are sincere in making this as your commitment to the ideals your parents stood for.
Mr. President, this humble representation - the Cebu Association of Media Practitioners, Inc. (CAMP), a select clique of broadcast news analysts and print columnists in Cebu - is writing to you to make you aware of what some of your government functionaries in Cebu are conniving to railroad your efforts toward a graft- and corruption-less government. A Napoles scam may just be a tip of the iceberg as there are similar graft-ridden government projects in Cebu and elsewhere that need to be put in the limelight and be stopped.
One particular case I am referring to your, Mr. President, is the Metro Cebu Water District Bulk Water Supply Project which will cost the government - since the MCWD is a government-owned and controlled corporation
- P6,300,695,700
The contract of this more than a billion peso project has just been awarded last Friday, December 13, 2013 to Cebu Manila Water Development. But here are some facts that makes on cringe in mental pain:
-The contract apparently was given to a favored bidder - the Cebu Manila Water Development. There was allegedly an attempt to "buy out" other bidders, notably in the form of making them back out of the bidding process because of one reference in the bidding process which requires the winning bidder to finish the multi-billion peso project in six months. Technical experts say even just a feasibility study about such a big and very complicated project would run even more than a year;
- A multi-billion government project should go through the scrutiny of the National Economic Development Authority, but in this deal, the NEDA apparently was deliberately made "blind and deaf" about the project;
- The bidding violated Republic Act 9184, otherwise known as the Government Procurement Act, which provides equal access and opportunity to government projects;
-There was failure of bidding and there was no resetting of bid dates, instead the contract was awarded to a lone bidder which knew all along it was "destined" to be the winning bidder to undertake the project;
-The intended public bidding was highly anomalous;
-The entire project, as referred to in the bidding documents, was despicably disadvantageous to the taxpayers, particularly the water consumers, which is tantamount to large-scale estafa, stealing the money and investments of water consumers directly affected by the project by making them pay P60 per cubic meter of water consumed;
-A disparaging act humiliating your honor, ridiculing your vow to make your maxim "Tuwid na Daan" - come true.
Mr. President, the undersigned is willing to sacrifice and become a whistleblower if only to make your administration come out clean and pure. I am begging you, His Excellency, to appropriately act on this request and have this probed by the Ombudsman.
Thank you, Mr. President, for giving this your preferential attention and I look forward to serving your concerns in the future.
Very sincerely yours,
Jun Arigo
President
Cebu Association of Media Practitioners