Philippine Ports Authority employees are asking Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales to act on a complaint they lodged last year against the port manager of the PPA in Negros Occidental involving P3-million worth of projects that were allegedly implemented under irregular bidding.

The PPA employees asked in a letter to Morales to act on their complaint filed in July last year.

The group had accused Enrique Fuentebaja, port manager of the PPA-Port Management Office based in Pulupandan, Negros Occidental, of violating Republic Act 9184, or the Government Procurement Reform Act for allegedly causing the questionable awarding of six separate contracts to only one favored contractor, Luck-Well Construction, owned by Ronald Del Rosario.

Fuentebaja was accused in his capacity as head of the Procuring Entity,of approving the Abstracts of Price Quotations of the six projects awarded to Luck-Well Construction.

Also named in the complaint were members of the PPA Bids and Awards Committee—Engineering Projects and private individuals who may have benefited from it.

The complaint was filed by a group calling themselves “concerned PPA employees” before the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas on July 13, 2011, and was docketed as Case No. CPL-V-11-0668.

The projects include repair and maintenance of water system of Port of San Carlos—P499,889.15; repair and improvement of PTB CR and canopy extensions of Port of San Carlos—P499,613.19; repair of partition between passenger area and canteen and Port of San Carlos—P431,226.88;

Repair of fence in front of Philippine Coast Guard in Port of San Carlos—P493,015.04; repair and improvement of PTB doors, windows, passenger chairs and canopy of Port of Danao—P499,896.32; and repair and improvement of water system in Port of Danao—P403,042.30.

The complainants said that the BAC-EP adopted an alternative mode of procurement, specifically the “small value procurement,” which should be resorted to only in “highly exceptional cases.”

The projects were just ordinary repairs and maintenance works, thus it can hardly be conceived as “highly exceptional cases,” they said.

They argued further that, because it has been categorized as “small value procurement,” the BAC is allowed to split the P3 million budget into six separate program of works with less than P500,000 budget.

The respective amount per project seems tailor-made to fall below the threshold for small value procurement, they said.

Fuentebaja yesterday said his actions were aboveboard and he has documents to prove it.

If their complaint is valid why don’t they come out in the open, he said of his accusers.

He said his office received the P3 million in late October and they needed to spend the amount for projects before December 31 to prevent having it reverted to the national government.

The method adopted for implementing the projects are allowed under the law and he is prepared to answer the charges lodged before the Ombudsman, Fuentebaja said.*CPG

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