Cebu City Councilor Sisinio Andales’s question to Mayor Michael Rama about the status of the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) project would have been more of a political tirade and less like an actual question from a concerned citizen wondering there’s no sign of actual construction yet.
“(Is it for real or) is it just a dream?,” the councilor asked.
His question was valid.
Let’s try and trace what happened so far.
The mayor launched a “Piso Mo, Hospital Ko” fundraising campaign after the public hospital was closed due to irreparable quake damage in October 2013.
Rama went around the country and even to the US to ask for donations. Officials like Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and US-based foundations, thanks to philanthropists like Mariquita Salimbangon-Yeung.
Citizens stepped up with doctors and professionals leading the group CCMC Cares. Architects in the group drew up a design for a bigger, modern city hospital. Rama expanded his vision to make it an an integrated police, medical, rescue complex located within the area where the city hospital once stood.
The old hospital had to be demolished.
Things would have proceeded well were it not for the discovery of a contractor, the lowest bidder, whose documents showed grave discrepancies that resulted in having the whole proposal thrown out, with much controversy over the pesky questions of the mayor’s chosen point person, Councilor Mary Ann delos Santos.
The mayor was irked by her public disclosure (even if he officially seconded her recommendation to reject the bid).
So over a year after the CCMC was rendered unfit for occupancy, we have a pause.
The mayor revamped the Bids and Awards Committee, sidelined delos Santos, and ordered a rebidding.
We hope the next step isn’t a change in the bid rules or lowering of its high standards of qualifying the CCMC contractor. We also hope the next step is not a return of the first bidder, who had caused the whole controversy in the first place, and the resulting recomposition of the BAC sans delose Santos. Now that would be too obvious a clever diversion.
The mayor is in a hurry to get the CCMC started, and rightfully so. Next year, politics will just be too thick in the air to get any real work done.
At present, Rama is expanding on the “temporary-permanent” setup of the CCMC just to improve services for a public that can’t wait for low-cost emergency medical care.
The mayor knows he has to “build back better”.
But he has to do it soon and with the kind of transparency that doesn’t invite questions of backroom deals that would allow arch critic Tomas Osmeña to trip him up.
It’s still several months away from October 15 so Rama should expedite the re-bidding of the CCMC project so it can start in earnest and show to the public that he is committed to seeing the project through.
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