Senator Sergio Osmeña III on Monday sought a Senate investigation against former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the alleged overpricing of a billion-peso bridge program during her term. 

 

In a statement released Monday, Osmeña said Mrs. Arroyo is guilty of “serial plunder” for overpricing by tens of billions the P111-billion President’s Bridge Program (PBS), which consists of 14 bridge contracts.

 

He said Mrs. Arroyo “misrepresented” the bridge program as an Official Development Assistance (ODA) project, which justified her administration’s decision to forego public bidding.

As of posting time, GMA News Online was still trying to get the side of Mrs. Arroyo, who now represents the second district of Pampanga in the House of Representatives.

 

Osmeña claimed Mrs. Arroyo even issued two executive orders to override the provisions of the Government Procurement Act and other laws which mandate public bidding even for ODA-funded projects.

 

“[Mrs.] Arroyo must explain to the Filipino people these very anomalous series of contracts that they forged with foreign companies. She and her cohorts could be held liable for plunder because this involves P111 billion in people’s money,” he said.

 

Osmeña explained that the former President and key officials from at least five government agencies created "a highly complex scheme" that pushed the costs of the bridges "way beyond their market prices."

 

He said the overpricing was disguised as “local expenses,” which he said averaged between 16 to 21 percent of the total project cost. 

 

"That amounts to roughly P20 billion which could have built all the classrooms that Filipino children had been needing so badly," he said.

 

He said the fee is "big" considering that each steel bridge is estimated by the Department of Public Works and Highways to cost around P560,000 per linear meter while concrete bridge costs only P240,000 per linear meter.

 

“I’m now wondering why the Arroyo administration purchased the more expensive steel bridges. Even our Skyway in Metro Manila is made of concrete. The Filipino people would have spent only P50 billion instead of P111 billion if we had hired Filipino producers to build the same length of concrete bridges," he said.

 

“The country has no steel industry to speak of, while our cement industry is booming. The former administration should have looked into this as concrete bridges are not only cheaper but would have also generated thousands of jobs and income for Filipinos as well as tax revenues for the government. Instead, GMA [Mrs. Arroyo's initials] gave jobs to foreign workers whose salaries were 10 to 20 times more than the Filipino worker,” he added.

 

“Besides concrete bridges are easier to maintain compared to steel bridges, which has to be protected every year against rust. That’s another cost for the government,” Osmeña said.

 

Osmeña said that there was collusion between government agencies to get every steel bridge project approved since there were no public biddings conducted and there was one "favored" supplier for every bridge project.

 

“The NBN-ZTE telecom and North Rail contracts pale in comparison with the GMA bridge contracts. The ZTE contract amounted to P13.7 billion and the North Rail contract amounted to P21 billion. These P111 billion serial scams are eight times the ZTE contract and five times the North Rail contract. This is the grandmother of all scams,” he said.

 

As of posting time, Osmeña is delivering a privilege speech on the issue.

Inter-parliamentary courtesy

But it remains to be seen if Mrs. Arroyo can be invited to the impending probe or if the former Philippine leader will attend the hearing at all.