Teachers press DBM for accountability after failure to blacklist overpriced laptop supplier

MANILA, Philippines — A nationwide group of teachers has scored the Department of Budget and Management over its failure to blacklist the supplier of laptops for public school teachers that were found to be pricey and outdated in 2022.

Based on the Commission on Audit’s 2022 report for DBM’s procurement arm, the agency has yet to comply with last year's audit recommendation to blacklist the supplier involved in the Department of Education's controversial purchase of P2.4 billion worth of entry-level laptops.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said that this speaks of the DBM procurement arm’s “lack of accountability and dereliction of duty to safeguard public funds from malversation.”

“This is a clear form of negligence to protect public funds that should have benefited the people directly,” ACT Chairperson Vladimer Quetua said in Filipino. 

According to the audit report, while the PS-DBM management said it has submitted a resolution on the blacklisting of the supplier for approval, state auditors said that the “blacklisting and termination review committee has not yet conducted blacklisting proceedings over the subject contracts.”

“Thus, a resolution on the termination of contracts or blacklisting of suppliers has not been issued,” state auditors said.

COA previously found that the PS-DBM favored a joint venture of suppliers — namely Sunwest Construction and Development Corporation, LDLA Marketing and Trading Inc., and VST ECS Philippines Inc. — over other bidders, despite the group failing to meet the technical specifications for the laptop purchase.

State auditors said the joint venture should have been barred from bidding outright because they offered a product with outdated specifications, such as a laptop with a Celeron processor, which is among the cheapest in the market. This deviated from the agreed-upon technical specifications enclosed in the memorandum of agreement between DepEd and PS-DBM in December 2017.

In its 2021 management letter to the PS-DBM, COA recommended that the blacklisting committee should promptly terminate and blacklist the mentioned projects and suppliers.

ACT urged the administration of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to act on the matter and for the concerned government agencies to take legal action against officials connected to the purchase and “recover the overpriced amount.”

In the same 2021 audit report, the COA flagged DepEd for the “pricey” entry-level laptops bought through PS-DBM that were priced at P58,300 each, which exceeded the approved budget of P35,046.50 by P23,253.50 per unit.

The purchase of the "pricey" laptops led to a nearly 50% decrease in the number of units DepEd could procure, COA said, going from its target of 68,500 purchased units for teachers to only 39,583.