Check the lifestyles of bridge overseers

Crooked policemen engage in street crimes. Criminals disguise themselves as policemen. The illegal numbers game jueteng thrives because rookie cops are trained early on to aid and abet the vice lords. Every year as Christmastime nears, convicts in Ozamiz City in Mindanao are let to escape to rob banks in Metro Manila and Southern Tagalog. With M23 grenade launchers, they’re better armed than lawmen.

Where are ordinary citizens to find succor?

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And then this. Media outlets have unmasked losing bidder Kolonwel Trading as orchestrating nasty reports against the winner in the PNP’s recent handgun purchase.

There ought to be a law against such muckraking. This one allegedly aims to stall the acquisition of 60,000 pistols that finally will equip unarmed vulnerable policemen. It is even being confused with a police rifle deal that officially has been stopped for reevaluation.

Kolonwel was the third bidder in the purchase budgeted at P1.198 billion. The lowest bidder was disqualified for inability to post the cash bond that would ensure compliance with delivery deadlines. The second lowest bidder, Trust Trade, stepped up with the bond and passed the endurance test. Its bid of P998 million would save the government P200 million. Trust Trade supplies the 9-mm Glock 17 (Generation 4), used by 65 percent of police departments in America.

PNP Deputy Director General Emelito Sarmiento, bids and awards chairman, says everything was above board. That may sound self-serving. But then, Napolcom officers and, more tellingly, NGO reps and TV-radio-print reporters witnessed the bidding and endurance testing. Had there been a stink, someone would have grumbled long ago.

The PNP only now is formalizing the purchase contract. But Kolonwel, owned by Juanito Tionloc, supposedly is bent on stopping it. Kolonwel is notorious among government contractors for resorting to underhanded tactics every time it loses a bidding. Aside from media smearing, it files nuisance lawsuits against public officials who defy its demands, media sources aver.

Kolonwel’s name popped up as bellyacher in the Department of Education’s rejection of its 17.5 million textbooks and teachers manuals. Also in that department’s bidding for P427 million in noodle packs for a schoolchildren-feeding program. There were also the Department of Agriculture’s P455-million ice-machine project, and P330-million urea supply. Too, the Bureau of Fire Protection’s purchase of P243 million in firefighting equipment.

The list goes on and on. If all government contracts were bad, why does Kolonwel keep joining supply deals? Several agencies have moved to ban it from participating in their supply requirements.

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At the instance of Sen. Koko Pimentel last Monday, the Senate will look into the government’s Special Bridges Project (SBP). Hopefully the inquiry pinpoints the culprits in the multibillion-peso bloating of bridge works under the past administration. This could prevent recurrence in the present admin, which is to spend many billion-pesos more to replace defective, rundown spans. One foreign supplier with P5.4 billion in cost overruns reportedly has changed its name in order to join the new SBP.

The lifestyles of the SBP overseers can be checked, for starters. One of them has been exposed in the Internet by a scandalized neighbor. The bureaucrat supposedly owns three brand-new SUVs, has just bought the adjacent lot of his suburban Manila house, and completed remodeling of a provincial manor.

The SBP is under the Department of Public Works and Highways-Project Management Office. It is different from the President’s Bridges Program, run by multi-departments under three administrations. Sen. Serge Osmeña also wants the PBP investigated.

Three European governments — Britain, Austria, Spain — lend money for the SPB. The Philippines pitches in hundreds of millions of pesos in counterpart funding, from the national budget. In the next 12 months the SBP will kick off the National Roads Bridge Replacement Project.

In all 133 bridges are to be replaced, with funding from the three governments to their compatriot suppliers. Britain is to provide in part P8.4 billion, with P650 million from the Philippines. One of nine foreign constructors, British entity Cleveland Bridge UK Limited is the sole supplier for British-funded works.

DPWH insiders aver that Cleveland Bridge used to be called Balfour Cleveland. Also: Balfour Beatty-Cleveland, Balfour Cleveland Consortiums, and Cleveland Balfour.

The National Economic and Development Authority recently approved the British loan and Philippine counterpart. Next, the DPWH and the renamed bridge supplier will sign a contract for steel trusses.

The Commission on Audit says that SBP cost overruns set back taxpayers more than P10 billion in 2001-2007. In particular, from a DPWH internal memo, one project of Balfour Cleveland initially contracted at P2.4 billion, eventually ended up costing P5.431 billion. The overrun of P3.032 was more than the original price. Cost overruns of P5 billion were also attributed to Austrian builder Waagner Biro.

The COA blames the overruns on work delays that pushed up loan interests and fees, and padded the contractors’ profits. Work delays arose from design and process mistakes, sloppy construction, and onerous contract provisos. In 2004 the Pasil Bridge in Kalinga collapsed while being built by Balfour Cleveland. The Abaton Bridge in Calapan City, Mindoro Oriental, toppled in 2011 barely five years after completion, doubling its original tag of P112.5 billion. Both projects were under the DPWH-PMO, as was the haphazard widening of the Tullahan Bridge in Malabon City, Metro Manila, in 2004.

The COA wants DPWH to debar poor performing contractors from future projects, and collect damages from defaulting suppliers.

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