CHED report cites irregularities in P300-M call center project

The P300-million call center project initiated by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is probably overpriced and involved serious irregularities in the bidding process conducted to award the contract to a lone bidder. This was contained in a report submitted by the technical and legal team tasked by CHED chairman Romulo Neri to investigate the deal. The report, presented by Neri to all of the agency’s four commissioners during Monday’s en banc meeting, said that an investigation found that the bids and awards committee (BAC) should have declared a failure of bidding upon pre-qualification of only one eligible bidder for the Integrated Multi-Site Business Process Outsourcing Incubation Contact Centers (BPO-ICC) project. “The BAC could have declared a failed bidding. There were grounds to do so. Given the magnitude of the project, it would have been prudent to do so," the investigating body said in their report. The report said that aside from the pre-qualification of only one group to participate in a public bidding, the BAC, they said, could have considered the questions raised by its technical working group (TWG) on the eligibility documents submitted by the consortium of E-Services Global Solutions, Inc. (ESGS); DrishtiPhilippines, Inc. (DPI); Information Transmission Computer Control, Inc. (ITCC); and Hillmarc’s Construction Corporation, which bagged the project. The probe team also noted that the BAC disregarded questions that surfaced regarding the qualification of ITCC in the post-qualification evaluation. The investigation also found that the civil works costs of the construction of one single-floor building and the “retrofitting" of five existing buildings to house six call center laboratories under the BPO-ICC project were “overpriced." Under the revised BPO-ICC plan, the project called for the ESGS-led consortium to put up six call centers in six state universities and colleges (SUCs) with one new building to be constructed at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) in Manila, and the retrofitting of existing buildings in the five other SUCs namely the Technological University of the Philippines (TUP), Laguna State Polytechnic University (LSPU), Tarlac State University (TSU), Pangasinan State University (PSU) and Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University (DMMSU). According to the investigation, the P40,646 per square meter cost of the new call center building to be put up in PUP to serve as the supposed “command center" of the project was high considering that government agency estimates of similar single-floor building with a medium-quality finish was only P20,000 per square meter. For the retrofitting of five existing buildings, it was learned that the government agency estimate for such civil works was only P10,000 per square meter. It was learned that the ESGS consortium’s cost for the retrofitting of the five existing buildings in TUP, LSPU, PSU, DMMSU and TSU was P45,755. Neri said they have decided to forward the report to the Commission on Audit (COA) for further investigation. Julito Vitriolo, deputy executive director of Ched and acting chairman of BAC, denied allegations of anomalous transactions. Vitriolo also threatened to file charges against those who leaked the report, saying it should have come from COA and not from the commission. “Only COA has the right to release the report and any private individual who cause its leakage is liable for charges. It is an opinion of private persons and the report has no probative value," he said. The project was conceptualized for the purpose of setting up call centers in 25 selected SUCs around the country. But this was reduced to only 16. Among the purposes of the project is to provide employment of the ballooning number of college graduates in line with the government’s objective to solve the growing “job mismatch" between the college graduates and the available jobs in the market. The project was implemented before Neri’s term at Ched but he approved the release of the P300 million budget for the project when he was still at the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). - Sun.Star