We respectfully call your attention to the article ‘No public bidding for P20.1-M ARMM infra projects – COA’ written by Michael Punongbayan on July 30, 2015.
The story was about the province of Maguindanao and not about ARMM, the regional government.
It must be also noted that while Maguindanao is a component province of the regional government, the two government units have different allocations for projects that are also implemented separately, therefore autonomous from each other.
For your information, all projects implemented by ARMM have gone through a very competitive bidding process as part of the reform agenda we implemented since Gov. Mujiv Hataman took over the ‘problematic’ regional government.
Our transparency mechanism has proven effective in ending corrupt and questionable practices in the government. It is precisely because of this reform agenda and its daring implementation that the regional government – for the first time since 1989, the year when it was established – was able to pass the national government’s Good Governance Conditions (GGS).
We take pride in this recognition as it proves that we have been on the right track towards dismantling a deeply ingrained culture of corruption, instituting region-wide reforms that speak of transparency and accountability to our people.
The story also incorrectly identified Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu as the governor of ARMM, adding that state auditors had “reminded ARMM officials that invitations to bid should be published in the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System website while procurements worth P5 million and above should be advertised in a newspaper of general circulation.”
The story peddles misinformation when accuracy is the standard. It provides details seemingly out of “confusion” resulting to errors which could have been easily remedied by the basic practice of fact-checking and verification – the minimum requirement for any publication, especially for a national broadsheet with a wide readership such as yours. – Amir S. Mawallil, Executive Director, Bureau of Public Information, ARMM