Kiko Pangilinan calls Teo explanation on Bitag’s P60-M DOT ads ‘ridiculous’

Senator Francis Pangilinan on Tuesday urged the Ombudsman to look into the P60 million worth of advertisements that the Department of Tourism had aired on state-run station PTV.

The ads were aired during the blocked time of Bitag Media Unlimited, Inc., which is run by broadcast journalist Ben Tulfo.

Tulfo is a brother of Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo.

"The P60-million Department of Tourism ad buy is on its face highly irregular and the Ombudsman should look into it,” Pangilinan said in a press statement.

Teo vouched for the regularity of the contract saying it was made government-to-government.

"The contract is between DOT and PTV4. It was a government-to-government contract. It went through a bidding and it was reviewed by our legal," Teo said at a press conference Monday.

"All checks were made payable to PTV4. Wala pong cheke na pumunta sa ibang production house and it was done when... we issued the checks when the deliverables were met," she added.

Pangilinan said if Teo’s explanation would be accepted, all Cabinet secretaries could now apportion millions of pesos worth of government projects and programs in their respective agencies for their brothers or sisters or their spouses.

“This explanation is totally ridiculous,” Pangilinan said.

COA, in its audit report on PTV covering the year 2017, raised the red flag over the payments made to Ben Tulfo's blocktimer Bitag Media Unlimited Inc. (BMU) amounting to P60.010 million in airing the advertisements of the DOT headed by his sister Teo.

It said PTV's payments to BMU, representing segment buy and spot placement in airing the DOT's commercial advertisements "were not supported with proper documents such as the Memorandum of Agreement and Certificate of Performance contrary to Section 4 of Presidential Decree 1445 and COA Circular No. 2012-001."

It said since there was no MOA wherein the terms and conditions of the agreement are supposed to be spelled out, there was also no basis for the computations as regards the three payments.  —NB, GMA News