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BY MAE SINGUAY
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February 5, 2018
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GSO head, others indicted over ‘anomalous’ road grader purchase
BACOLOD City – General Services Office (GSO) head Jerome Solinap said he is ready to answer the administrative and criminal charges filed against him at the Office of the Ombudsman.
The charges stemmed from a complaint that Executive Assistant Samuel “Sammy” Montoyo lodged before the anti-graft court on Nov. 28, 2017.
They were docketed as OMB-V-C-17-0509 (criminal charge) and OMB-V-A-17-0536 (administrative charge), a Dec. 13, 2017 Ombudsman document showed.
Montoyo lodged the complaint against Solinap, former mayor Monico Puentevella and several others, accusing them of graft and corruption, falsification of public documents, and grave misconduct over the city’s “anomalous” purchase of a P12-million road grader in May 2015.
Panay Newswas still reaching Puentevella and the others for comment as of this writing.
Solinap said the GSO did “not accept” the road grader upon the advice of the City Engineer’s Office officer-in-charge Noel Impreso.
Solinap said the road grader was defective as it produced a loud knocking sound (“gakalakala”) when tested.
Montoyo said the fund used to buy the road grader was sourced from the budget of the City Engineer’s Office worth P9 million and the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) worth P3 million.
Montoyo stressed that using the CDRRMO’s fund for the purchase of the road grader is not in order.
The road grader is not “fit for spending” of the CDRRMO, he added.
In the complaint, Montoyo claimed that Puentevella approved an obligation request for the road grader’s procurement.
On April 8, 2015, a bidding was held. That time, Solinap was the chairman of the city’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC), Montoyo said.
Lone bidder Megamight Enterprises won the bid, selling the road grader to the city government for P9.6 million.
But then city engineer Belly Aguillon protested buying the road grader.
Aguillon – who was dismissed from service in relation to the furniture case also lodged against Mayor Evelio Leonardia and others – said they requested for a road grader made in Europe but the bidder presented them a unit made in China, claimed Montoyo.
Megamight Enterprises then reduced the price of the road grader to P8.5 million – which Montoyo finds “anomalous.”
When Leonardia assumed the mayor’s position in 2016, it was discovered that the road grader was “abandoned” at the City Engineer’s Office, according to Montoyo.
On July 20, 2017, Megamightauthorized representativeAbraham Alagon Jr. wrote Leonardia that due to the long delay of their billing – which took more than a year – the road grader became defective and thus they “will pull out the unit and voluntarilyreplace it as soon as possible.”/PN
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