Gatchalian: Service fee for DBM-PS not worth paying
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Thursday, September 8 scored the P69-million service fee the Department of Education (DepEd) paid the Department of Budget and Management’s Procurement Service (DBM-PS) for the procurement of pricey but outdated laptops for teachers.
Gatchalian expressed his disappointment at the DBM’s attached agency after DepEd Undersecretary Annalyn Sevilla told the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that the agency paid such amount to the DBM-PS as a service fee for the purchase of the laptops.
Sevilla explained that the DepEd’s actual service fee to DBM-PS was only three percent of the P2.3-billion contract price.
She said the procurement agency usually charges five percent of the amount of the contract price, but DepEd officials were able to negotiate and bring it down to three percent and thus, helped them save funds.
But Gatchalian said he finds the P69-million service fee “not worth the sloppy work.”
“And we’re hoping after the decades existence of the PS-DBM, they would have perfected the art of procurement. But obviously that is not the case,” Gatchalian said at the continuation of the Senate hearing on the alleged overpriced laptop procurement.
“And yet various government agencies are paying as high three percent of their procurement price. In this particular case, P69-million for work that is obviously very sloppy and a lot of errors through out the process,” Gatchalian lamented.
Sen. Francis Tolentino, chair of the Senate blue ribbon panel, said they will invite other suppliers of the laptops in the next hearing.
Tolentino also said former undersecretary Christopher Lao has committed to appear physically in the next public hearing to provide some documents.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, for his part, said it is “still too early” to conclude there was a collusion during the procurement process.