Palace: No need for DOTC chief to go on leave

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang does not see the need to ask Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya to take a leave while he and top officials of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) are investigated for entering into an allegedly anomalous maintenance contract for the Metro Rail Transit 3.

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said Abaya had already appeared in a number of committee hearings in Congress to explain the situation at the MRT-3 and answer the allegations against him.

“He said he’s willing to cooperate and to attend, to appear before any investigative body. And he also mentioned, if I remember his first paragraph was: ‘if there’s nothing to hide, why be afraid.’ And so he’s willing to face the complaint filed before the ombudsman,” Lacierda said.

“But as always… whether a person should take a leave is a personal decision,” he added.

Lacierda said the Office of the Ombudsman would be another venue for Abaya to give his side.

“Abaya will be willing and ready to face whatever accusation is hurled against him,” Lacierda said.

Abaya said yesterday he is ready to be investigated by the Office of the Ombudsman for entering into an allegedly anomalous maintenance contract for the MRT-3.

“I’m ready to face an investigation. I take responsibility for this contract since I was the one who signed it,” Abaya told reporters on the sidelines of a budget hearing at the House.

“We have already been investigated by the Senate and the House of Representatives on this and we have explained it to them. This is part of the job, the task I’ve signed for,” he said.

Abaya said he would follow President Aquino’s instructions on how to move on, though he added that he would not take a leave of absence while the investigation is pending.

Abaya said when he assumed office as head of the DOTC on Oct. 18, 2012, agency officials informed him that the MRT maintenance contract with its contractor then, Sumitomo, was about to expire.

He pointed out that they had to hire a new maintenance service provider or the safety of the more than 500,000 daily MRT riders would be compromised.

“Under the law, we can negotiate the new contract, but we opted to go for simplified bidding, under which three contractors were asked to submit their bids,” Abaya explained.

He added a joint venture between an experienced maintenance provider, Comm Builders and Technology Philippines Corp. (CB&T) and newly formed Philippine Trans Rail Management and Services Corp. (PH Trams), was chosen as replacement for Sumitomo.

He said the law required them to look at the joint venture-bidder and not at individual partners, though he admitted that PH Trams was formed just two months before winning the maintenance contract with CB&T.

He said the CB&T-PH Trams contract was lower than the Sumitomo maintenance deal.

Aside from Abaya, ordered investigated for graft by the Ombudsman’s office were former MRT general manager Al Vitangcol III; Undersecretaries Jose Perpetuo Lotilla, Rene Limcaoco and Rafael Antonio Santos, Assistant Secretaries Ildefonso Patdu and Dante Lantin, and Light Rail Transit Authority administrator Honorito Chaneco, who were members of the bids and awards committee.

Also covered by the order were negotiating team members Misael Narca, Joel Magbanua, Arnel Manresa, Natividad Sansolis, Gina Rodriguez, Eugene Cecilio, Raphael Lavides and Geronimo Quintos, and representatives of CB&T-PH Trams Wilson de Vera, Arturo Soriano, Marlo de la Cruz, Manolo Maralit and Federico Remo.

Soriano, a Pangasinan provincial government official, is an uncle of Vitangcol’s wife.

Soriano said he welcomes the probe “to once and for all clear my name also because they keep on mentioning PH Trams where I used to work.”

Soriano, one of the incorporators of PH Trams, said he is ready to face any investigating body, adding that he has nothing to hide and is ready with his evidence to show investigators.

Soriano said he had divested his shares with PH Trams in 2012 when the company tried to enter into an agreement with the MRT.

He said he joined the group for deals with private corporations, like the MRTC  – a private corporation – for maintenance of the MRT, and not with the government, as this would give him problems because he is also with government.

According to the results of a preliminary inquiry conducted by the ombudsman, the Sumitomo contract was entered into in December 1997 and was to expire on June 21, 2010 but was extended up to October 2012.

The ombudsman’s field investigation office said it discovered that 15 days prior to the expiration of the last extension, a new contract amounting to $1.15 million a month was awarded to PH Trams-CB&T without public bidding.

During the House inquiry on the maintenance contract, Abaya and Lotilla said they did not know that Soriano was related to Vitangcol when the CB&T-PH Trams joint venture won the deal.

Lotilla said the Government Procurement Reform Law did not allow them to disqualify a joint venture on the basis of deficiencies on the part of one partner.

He admitted that CB&T was the partner that had the financial and technical capability, and that PH Trams alone would not have won the contract.

Vitangcol, De Vera, De la Cruz, and Maralit had also been linked to the reported extortion attempt on Czech firm Inekon, which former Czech ambassador Josef Rychtar had exposed. – With Jess Diaz, Eva Visperas