Anomalous transactions hound province of Cebu

It’s one of those days again when I have to rerun a program on our talk show “Straight from the Sky.” And since it’s been a year already when we had a video shoot at the Kool Adventure Camp (KAC) of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI) I decided that it was time to do a replay of that shoot as it was the first time that Straight from the Sky made an outdoor shoot using a drone.

With us tonight is RAFI’s KAC camp staff Edvan Loh, camp director, Dapne Dia, program manager Youth Development Program, Leomil Urpiana, senior facilitator. So watch this very interesting show on one of Cebu’s famous facilities for enhancing leadership development and creating better individuals for the future on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00 tonight with replays on Wednesday and Saturday. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9:00 tonight and at 7:00AM and 9:00PM on Wednesday and Friday.

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Since I was out in Osaka two weeks ago and therefore I was out of circulation especially with news from Cebu, this is why I missed out on writing something that I strongly believe is a highly anomalous transaction in the province of Cebu. Yes, we were always made to believe that Governor Hilario Davide III was a good and therefore an honest man… who didn’t want to do anything wrong. But these news items that came out while I was in Osaka, Japan tell us a different story of Jun Jun Davide… that he is not “Pahoy” after all.

I was scanning the two-week old newspapers and Holy Frejoles! I found out that the Cebu Provincial Board has asked the Bids and Awards Committee to explain the award of the contract for the purchase of some P250.6 million worth in heavy equipment that they awarded to the highest bidder. Highest bidder?

In all my life, I have always complained that the government procurement system was wrong… that it should not be awarded to the lowest but the best possible bidder. But no one cared to listen and up to this time, BAC rules are always given to the company that gives out the lowest bid in any bidding contest. But lo and behold, what we saw in this case was the BAC of Gov. Davide changing the rules of the government procurement system in awarding this bid to the highest bidder!

I met a friend the other day who revealed to me that the highest bidder for this procurement of heavy equipment are for Chinese-made machines, while the lowest bidder who lost this bid was for Japanese-made machines. Come on! If we are looking for a car, between a Chinese made car or a Japanese made car… even if the latter is more expensive, I would choose the latter. Even in the motorcycle industry, the top four Japanese made brands maybe a bit more expensive than the Japanese ones, but they are certainly more reliable than those Chinese copycats.

I understand from The Freeman article written by Greg Rubio last Nov.11th that Gov. Davide already signed his approval of this transaction and thus, Gov. Davide should be made liable for his actions on this issue. I gathered that someone is filing a graft case in the Office of the Ombudsman because of this transaction… giving us the real score that after all, Gov. Davide isn’t as clean as he is being portrayed in the media.

Still on the burning issues at the provincial Capitol, we haven’t heard anything from the province of Cebu regarding the article we wrote on the complaints of DYRC and DyCM Radio commentator Oscar Pasaporte regarding the P86 million consultants program. Again I’d like to point out that we need the fine details of this program… and why so much is being paid by the province of Cebu to have these consultants, whom I seriously believe is milking the province of Cebu dry.

Yet another potential problem is in the offing. The Province of Cebu would soon award the P26.5 million disaster consultancy for the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office for Climate Change and Disaster preparedness. I understand that this is for a five-year program. My question is… why can’t this wait for the new administration that would be the one to implement this program?

From the news report that I read, it seems that the participants of this bidding are organizations like Freedom from Debt Coalition, Center for Disaster Preparedness, and Kaabag sa Sugbo. As it turns out, Kaabag sa Sugbo won this P26.5 million disaster preparedness program. Come now, before the province of Cebu awards this to Kaabag Sugbo, I would like to know what is their track record in designing such programs on disaster preparedness? Did Kaabag sa Sugbo win this bidding because their staff speaks the Cebuano dialect? Come now, we are all Cebuanos and we should win the bidding because of our track record and not just because we speak Cebuano!

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