With available cash of at least P600 million, Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama said he is more determined than ever to pursue the city hospital’s reconstruction project.
City Hall is now preparing “with utmost urgency” the documents needed for the project rebidding.
Reconstruction of the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC), which was damaged by the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that hit Cebu on October 15, 2013, has been stalled for more than a year.
Rama declared failure of bidding last year, shortly after the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) ruled on the disqualification of the lowest bidder, WTG Construction and AM Oreta and Company, during the post-qualification stage.
Rama said his declaration was made to erase suspicions of favoritism and anomalies in the selection of the lowest bidder.
Last year, the consortium won the bidding for phase 1 of the project worth P300 million.
Rama said that when rebidding is called, he wanted to increase the project cost to P600 million or even more to also broaden the scope of the construction project.
He wanted the 2015 allocation of another P300 million and money that may be raised from pledges included in the project cost.
“The (total) amount will already be P600 million plus we will be securing pledges from private sector (donors) like SM, from the ABC and others. How much total (we will raise), that will be the amount that will be rebidded,” he told reporters.
While City Hall works on the CCMC reconstruction project, Rama said, he intends to keep the hospital ad hoc committee that is currently headed by councilor Mary Ann delos Santos.
Rama said that he only wanted to revisit the composition and purpose of the committee’s creation “to attune to what we want.”
Rama also wants the hospital’s facilities to extend to a lot now occupied by the One Citilink Terminal.