Senator Alan Peter Cayetano on Thursday, August 25 said he does not believe that the immediate abolition of the Department of Budget and Management-Procurement Services (DBM-PS) would solve the corruption issues hounding the agency.
Among the senators who believe the DBM-PS should be abolished include Sen. Risa Hontiveros, Senate President Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri and Sen. Imee Marcos.
But Cayetano said that during the time of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, the DBM-PS had a “very high esteem.”
He pointed out that the agency has since been running longer for many years and abolishing it would be tantamount to bringing down an institution with a good record of efficiency.
“It’s like saying that for 15 years for all the Senate presidents, the Senate has been conducting proper bidding and all of a sudden there was an issue of overpricing. You don’t abolish the Senate, right? You punish whoever is responsible,” Cayetano said in an interview with reporters following the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee’s initial hearing on the Department of Education’s (DepEd) P2.4-billion overpriced laptops.
“Unless you say that from the start of 15 years, it has been corrupt every single time, then you abolish it. So I don’t agree to just keep abolishing because when you do so, that person will just transfer to a different agency. Those liable should be prosecuted,” he stressed.
“So it’s not the DBM-PS that is the problem, but the people who took over and those who committed anomalies,” the senator stressed.
During the hearing, senators grilled officials of the DBM-PS and the DepEd over the decision to purchase laptops at P58,000 per unit in 2021.
Education Undersecretary Alain Pascua claimed the DBM-PS gave them an action slip prior to the procurement. The action slip, according to Pascua, indicated the quantity and the price of laptops, and there was an option to purchase in lesser quantity.
But Pascua pointed to ICT Director Abram Abanil as the one who signed the concurrence on the action slip. But the action slip was not addressed to the top executives of the DepEd.
Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa said the DepEd should not have agreed to this action.
Sen. Francis Tolentino, head of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, also berated Salvador Malana III, former DepEd Assistant Secretary for Procurement and Administration, for citing the Food and Drug law in the signed memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the DepEd and the DBM-PS on the purchase of laptops.
Malana III admitted the mistake saying it can be attributed to the “pro-forma” contract provided by the DBM-PS. The MOA was signed by then DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones and former DBM-PS officer-in-charge Christopher Lloyd Lao, who was also involved in the overpriced Covid-19 supplies that the Senate probed in the 18th Congress.
Tolentino lamented that the lawyers who were tasked to review the document failed to thoroughly study the provisions stated in the MOA.
“Bakit po nakasali dito ang Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? Bakit nakasali po ang Department of Health (DOH)? Ang pinag-uusapan natin laptop hindi po ito PPE (Why was the FDA included in the document? Why was the DOH also included? We are talking here about laptops not personal protective equipment),” Tolentino pointed out.
“Hindi po ito (These are not) medical devices, hindi po ito (these are not) medicines, nakalagay po sa contract tapos cinite pa sa (It was in the contract and even cited in the) succeeding articles, referring to Section 1 again, and section 1 refers to that FDA,” he further questioned.
"Hindi ho kaya merong de kahong kontrata na pinalitan na lang kung medicine, ginawang laptop. Bakit po nakasama ang FDA? (Was there a pro-forma contract that you just replace laptop for every word written as medicine)? FDA is not part of this procurement process. Laptop po ito para sa DepEd (These are laptops for DepEd),” he added.
Malana later on admitted that the inclusion of the FDA in the contract was a mistake by the legal team handling the procurement papers.
"I would admit that there were mistakes not on the part of the legal department but the lawyers who were involved in the crafting of the document,” Malana said.
“But I do take responsibility for having signed as a witness. I provided the secretary inputs on the legality or propriety,” he further said.
However, Tolentino said that with Malana’s admission, there could be other “legal mistakes" on the procurement and the issue regarding the laptops might just be the "tip of the iceberg."