Non-existent law used in justifying takeover of LRT 1, says LRT officials

The Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA) invoked a non-existent provision of the law to justify its takeover last May 16 of the maintenance and operations of the Monumento-to-Baclaran LRT 1 line from a Belgian company, top LRTA officials disclosed over the weekend.

LRTA itself did not give any reason to Transurb Technirail for not renewing its maintenance contract, which was renewed several times since last year. LRTA had hastily hired more than 200 personnel to take over the line as of May 16.

Transurb Technirail has been handling the maintenance of LRT 1 until the LRTA decided to just take-over the maintenance of the system until a new contractor shall have been chosen. A bidding has been scheduled for the maintenance service contract on July 1.

However, several groups, including LRTA technical people, have questioned the capability of the LRTA to handle the maintenance, saying the agency may just be endangering the lives and safety of LRT commuters.

Earlier, LRTA chief of staff Zosimo Mendoza said "repeated extension of the Technirail contract would not only violate existing laws on public bidding but also go against the essence of public bidding, which is competition and fairness, especially that the Belgian company is one of the bidders."

Outside lawyers and even LRTA insiders said, however, the unnamed law, RA 9184, does not prohibit the extension at all and pointed out to Mendoza’s "repeated extension" as the giveaway answer.

Technirail’s contract was extended last year after a bidding yielded no winner. It was then extended a few times more until May 15 this year.

They added that never in the history of any bidding was an existing contractor removed simply because it was going to bid for a new contract. "Service to the public is never compromised because of a bidding. Fairness is not an issue because the rules are the same for all."

In fact, they said, "what is not fair was the offer of LRTA to hire Technirail’s more than 400 people to run the line until the bidding has yielded the winner by July 1. This would weaken the technical capability of Technirail. It just so happens, not even 30 went over to LRTA."

"There is no logic to what LRTA is doing. It is either poor management skills or something we can only suspect, especially during bidding time," they said.