Councilor de los Santos is new target lowest bidder’s protest

‘I WON’T BUDGE’

De los Santos: ‘I will stand by my decision to disqualify them’

Cebu City Councilor Mary Ann De Los Santos with a copy of the CCMC ad hoc committee resolution appointing her to the Bids and Awards Committe as representative of the end user or requisitioner, the Office of the Mayor.

She’s not changing her mind.

Councilor Mary Ann De los Santos said she’ll re-main firm on voting for the disqualification of the lowest bidder for giving “false information” and “misrepresentation” in its P275 million bid for construction of the new Cebu City Medical Center.

The councilor suddenly found herself the first target of attack of  the joint venture WTG Construction and Development Corp. and A.M. Oreta & Co. Inc. in its request for reconsideration of the decision of the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC).

The 3-2 vote to disqualify the lowest bidder was made by the BAC after a heated discussion on Oct. 31.

“We put to question the vote of Hon. Mary Ann C. De los Santos … as she is an elected official who has no right to sit in the BAC,” said the motion for reconsideration submitted by Willy T. Go, general manager of WTG Construction, filed on Monday.

The contractor cited a provision of the Government Procurement Act or Republic Act 9184 that said BAC members shall be “personnel occupying plantilla positions.”

The request will be discussed by the  7-member BAC, headed by city engineer Jose Marie Poblete, which will have to vote again on the matter.

Poblete was among the three who voted to disqualify the bidder, with de los Santos  and city assessor Ferdinand Cañete.

De los Santos, who was appointed by Mayor Michael Rama as head of the CCMC ad hoc committee, said she was sitting in the BAC as the representative of the end user or requisitioner, the Cebu city  mayor’s office.

She told Cebu Daily News the  question of her eligibility in the BAC was suspiciously late in the day.

“Why ask only now? Is it because they’re disqualified? From the very start, I was sitting as a BAC member. They could have invoked my authority earlier. They know that from the start.”

“My position will not change.  I will stand by what I said that I am disqualifying the lowest bidder,”  she said.

The contractor also questioned  the authority of Joseph Abellar as head of the BAC’s Technical Working Group (TWG), saying that a check of records showed that the head is a certain Engr. Rhomel Collamar.

OVER RESTRICTIVE

After challenging the eligibility of two key players in the BAC, the contractor raised these points in its protest:

1. The condition of the bidding that a bidder must have completed a single largest contract similar to the CCMC project in the amount of P300 million in the last five years was “arbitrary” and “overly restrictive”. WTG  said Phase 1 works don’t require prior hospital experience.

2. The bidding and supporting documents submitted were “complete, genuine, authentic.”
The contractor said the bronze marker in the FEU Nicanor Reyes Sr. Medical Center Building cited by the BAC as proof of “misrepresentation” of its track record was not a reliable basis for knowing when construction by A. M. Oreta was completed.

3. The failure to disclose all pending infrastructure project was “an honest and excusable mistake.”
About her qualification, de los Santos  said her appointment in the BAC is covered by a resolution approved by the CCMC ad hoc committee which is under the Office of the Mayor.

“My position there (in the BAC) is clothed with authority in a form of resolution. It is not new to the people who signed it,” she said, showing a copy.

It was signed by the committee’s vice chairman Atty. Jose Daluz III, Jose Marie Poblete, Councilors Lea Japson, James Anthony Cuenco, David Tumulak, CCMC Chief of Hospital Dr. Gloria Duterte, Dr. Shawn Espina of CARE CCMC and De los Santos herself as chairperson.

The same ad hoc committee passed a resolution designating Duterte and Cuenco in the BAC’s Technical Working Group (TWG) for CCMC.

The resolution bears the letterhead of the Office of the City Mayor but not Rama’s signature.

“For the sake of argument, they’re already estopped from questioning because the BAC report with the decision on disqualification was already submitted to the mayor who approved it. The mayor approved the process,” said de los Santos.

Under section 11 of the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of RA 9184,  regular members of the BAC need to be permanent officials or with plantilla positions.

But it also says that for provisional members, he or she should be “a representative from the end user unit who has knowledge of procurement laws and procedures.”

If the bidder had questions about BAC members , Delos Santos said they should have raised them at the pre-procurement and pre-bid conferences in August and September.

“It’s very ironic. They question the requirement of a hospital project in the last five years, and they say it’s restrictive, but they complied. And in the course of complying, they misrepresented, they falsified, they lied,” she said.

In the BAC’s disqualification report for the lowest bidder, they pointed out that the hospital project claimed by Manila-based A.M. Oreta was completed in November 8, 2000 as written in a bronze marker in the Far Eastern University Nicanor Reyes Sr. Medical Center building.

HONEST MISTAKE

The contractor claimed that they completed the project in 2009 making them comply with the five-year requirement.  But certifications from FEU hospital executives which wrote to the BAC said they only contracted AM Oreta until 2000.  Another contractor was engaged to finish expansion and renovation work until 2010.

The BAC also found out that instead of three on-going projects declared by Cebu-based WTG, they have at least 12 on-going projects in Region 7 alone as certified by the Department of Public Works and Highways.

The contractor said this was just an “honest and excusable” mistake.

But De los Santos is not convinced.

“If you join a bid, you buy the bid documents which shows all requirements. How can it be a mistake in good faith? It’s very clear. The government procurement law is a special law. You have to realize that in a special law, you can’t invoke good faith,” she explained.
The BAC chairman, Poblete, said he would set a meeting soon.

Poblete earlier said they want to settle the motion for reconsideration first before  post-qualifying the second lowest bidder which is the joint-venture of Manila-based SCDI-MCEI.

De los Santos recommended that the BAC  start reviewing the second lowest bidder immediately since it’s provided by law.

“Every day matters to the poor people of Cebu. For the delivery of basic health services for Cebuanos, every day matters.” she said.

CCMC is the only public hospital in Cebu City that caters to the poor.

The 7.2 magnitude earthquake last year forced authorities to condemn the building and demolish it last February.

Plans to build a ten-storey hospital to replace it at a cost of P1.5 billion has to be done in stages.

Cebu City has funds for Phase 1 at P300 million to start the foundations.

Mayor Rama, who is in Manila, declined to comment on the contractor’s motion for reconsideration.

He said he hasn’t read a copy yet.

Rama has been in Manila  since Tuesday to attend the 61st assembly of the League of Cities of the Philippines.

Yesterday, he was there to attend an International River Summit.