Without Senator Richard Gordon’s signature, the memorandum of agreement granting the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) free use of the lot where it put up last year its molecular laboratory for COVID-19 tests may not be valid.
The Commission on Audit (COA) has aired doubts about the “validity and enforceability” of the MOA after auditors discovered that the document has not been signed by Gordon, as PRC chairman, and the heads of the Clark International Airport Corporation (CIAC) and the Clark Development Corporation (CDC).
The unsigned and unnotarized MOA was supposed to provide the PRC free use of a 4,000 square property at the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga. The PRC has been occupying it since June, 2020 as the site of its Bio-Molecular Laboratory.
A portion of the MOA also allowed PRC the use of sets of computer equipment free of charge.
COA noted that despite benefiting from the deal, the internaitonal humanitarian agency failed to reciprocate the generosity extended by the CIAC and the CDC, both state-owned firms.
In the 2020 annual audit report for CIAC that COA released recently, the state audit agency said that based on the unsigned MOA covering the transaction, “the CIAC and CDC were not accorded special privileges in exchange for the benevolence extended by the state-owned corporations to the PRC.”
COA did not specify what special privileges it had expected that the PRC should have extended to CIA and CDC, which are both subsidiaries of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) under the Office of the President.
During the exit conference conducted early this year, state auditors were informed that the president of both CDC and CIAC signed the MOA but “still awaiting for the signature” of Gordon.
The PRC put up a Bio-Molecular Laboratory at the CFZ last year. The laboratory is reportedly capable of processing up to 2,000 COVID-19 tests per day with its two Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) machines.
The audit observation indicated that since the MOA between PRC and the two BCDA subsidiaries have not been notarized or signed, the interest of CIAC has been placed at stake because such agreement violates the corporation’s standard procedures as provided under Presidential Decree No. 1445.
“Moreover, the COA Audit Team was precluded from performing the timely review and evaluation thereof,” the audit report added.