FEB.

28, 2012 DATE

NR # 2693B
REF. NO.

Lawmaker seeks probe into termination of P243-M fire-fighting gear contract

Bayan Muna Party-list Rep. Teddy Casio is seeking a congressional inquiry into what is considered a dubious termination of the P243-million fire-fighting gear purchase contract of a winning bidder to allegedly favor the Bureau of Fire Protections regular suppliers. The House Committee on Good Government chaired by Rep. Jerry Treas has been tasked by plenary to handle the investigation under House Resolution 2104, authored by Casio. Government should immediately look into this anomaly. It appears that our fire fighters and the public are being held hostqage to the infighting and jostling for juicy contracts in the BFP, Casino lamented. Casios resolution states that it is downright irregular, if not dubious, that it took more than a year for the BFP-BAC to award the contract after determining the winning bidder. More dubious, he added was that the contract was arbitrarily withheld by BFP OIC Samuel Perez who later declared the entire bidding a failure on technical grounds which were belatedly raised in mere letters to him by two losing bidders who happen to be regular suppliers of the BFP. Casio noted that BFPs own bids and awards chairman Ruben Bearis wrote in a Memorandum to DILG Sec. Robredo saying, We in the BFP-NHQ BAC are in fact in a quandary now why the OIC of the BFP has been consistently refusing to award the contract to the winning bidder. The matter has already passed through the hands and careful scrutiny of three Bids and Awards Committeess and all these three have remained consistent with its decision. The lawmaker, in the chronology of events, recalled that in October 2010, the BFP opened for bidding various fire-fighting gears, namely helmets, coats and trousers, gloves and boots. On February 11, 2011, the BFP informed Kolonwei Trading that it won the bidding, having submitted the lowest calculated bid of P242,806,753.00. Notably, this is the first time said company (Kolonwei Trading) has participated and won in a BFP bidding, the resolution stated. Thereafter, Kolonwei was asked to submit various post-qualification papers. However, after complying with said requests, the BFP again asked on April 20, 2011 for additional documents. Again, a month later, an additional request for test results on the quality and safety of their products was made.

FEB. 28, 2012 DATE

NR # 2693B
REF. NO.

On October 17, 2011 the Bids and Awards Committee of the BFP came out with a resolution signed by no less than DILG Sec. Jesse Robredo awarding the contract to Kolonwei Trading. Under the procurement law, the entire procurement process should be conducted within three months. In this particular case, it took a year for the BAC to complete the process due to what appears to be afterthough requirements brought to the BFPs attention by losing bidders Panpisco Technologies, Inc. and 911 Alarm, both long-time suppliers of the BFP, Casio said. Casio surmised the said suppliers did not avail of the protest mechanism as prescribed by the Procurement Law (RA 9184) but raised their concerns through mere letters to BFP OIC Perez. Reportedly BFP OIC Perez, upon receiving the letters and without benefit of due process withheld the awarding of the contract to Kolonwei and later declared a failure of bidding, two months after Kolonwei was declared the winning bidder. And the rest is a grim history. (30) dpt