The discovery of rats in a makeshift morgue— a container van used to temporarily house cadavers —inside what remains of the Cebu City Medical Center is a stark reminder for city officials to speed up the construction of a new hospital.
Plans for a new P1 billion hospital to replace the edifice torn down after the October 2013 earthquake were drawn up by civil society groups and Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama. They can’t be executed overnight, but City Hall has to take pains to reassure the public that the project won’t be bogged down by political intramurals, red tape or worse, infested with another breed of rats that steals people blind.
Last Sunday’s complaint was bizarre. A family had found out that the nose of what remained of a young male gunshot victim was gnawed off. At the morgue, where his body lay, they saw big rats scurrying off.
The disfiguring bites came amid reports of a shakeup in the bids and awards committee of Cebu City Hall for the CCMC project. This part is more worrying.
Gone are the firm voices who exposed a near-winning bidder for grossly misrepresenting its track record and even lying about the address of its partner’s Manila office.
Councilor Mary Ann delos Santos and the BAC chairman, City Engr. Jose Marie Poblete, have been tossed out. No explanation was given.
The revamped BAC will be chaired by City Attorney Jerone Castillo, a trusted lieutenant of the mayor and other people who are his close allies.
So what happened to the mayor’s trust in the independent-minded delos Santos, whom he appointed to the bids committee to represent the “requisitioner”, the mayor’s office?
Shoudn’t the mayor have praised delos Santos and Poblete for standing firm on requirements of transparency and truthfulness of bid documents in evaluating the lowest bidder of the all-important P300 million Phase 1 of a hospital which Rama hopes to leave as his legacy for the city?
Both officials are members of Team Rama, but not team player enough, it seems.
Why was she and Poblete, who voted to post-disqualify WTG Construction-E.M. Ureta last November for glaring discrepancies in their bid documents, out of the kulambo?
The BAC voted 3-2 to scrap the joint venture’s P275 million bid. The third “no” vote was Ferdinand Cañete. He was reassigned as BAC secretariat. In that post, he can no longer vote.
Can you hear rodents’ teeth gnawing bit by bit?
We hope the unexplained ouster of the two officials is not a prelude to a nasty surprise like a cadaver’s missing nose — or the emergence of the same bidder whose disqualification was headed off by a BAC revamp.
Citizen watchdogs are all the more needed now in the CCMC project, a public hospital which Cebu city owes to thousands of indigent patients who no longer have a place to go.
Watchdogs, which includes the media, must be around to safeguard the bidding process, and make sure the project won’t be undermined by invisible rats out to nibble on what shouldn’t be bargained away –- a legacy of service and well spent public funds.
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