MANILA, Philippines -- A labor group pushing for increased protection for workers from the Influenza A (H1N1) virus has urged the Ombudsman to investigate the recent awarding by the Department of Health (DOH) of a contract to supply influenza-testing machines to a foreign-owned firm.
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said the contract was awarded to Roche (Philippines) Inc., a company 99.99-percent owned by Swiss nationals, in violation of the country’s procurement laws allowing only entities 60-percent Filipino-owned to bid to goods to the government.
The TUCP also said Roche’s price was nearly 25 percent higher than the lowest bidder.
“We are dumbfounded at the brazenness by which the DOH carried out the supposed open and competitive public bidding for the machines, only to later negotiate with the losing bidder that was not even eligible to supply goods to the government,” TUCP secretary general Ernesto Herrera said in a statement.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer tried to get a comment from Roche’s Makati office but no one took the calls at the corporate affairs department.
According to Herrera, the TUCP supported “in principle” the health department’s decision to acquire the machines.
“However, we must stress that we do not want the menace posed by the A(H1N1) virus to be used as a pretext to circumvent existing procurement rules meant to ensure transparency and fairness, discourage malfeasance and safeguard public funds,” he said.
The DOH recently conducted a public bidding for three Real-Time PCR Machines. The TUCP said Macare, a wholly Filipino-owned firm, offered the lowest price at P2.4 million per unit while Roche offered the next lowest price at P2.955 million per unit.
Herrera said the DOH awarded the contract to Roche, which is entirely foreign-owned based on records filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The labor leader pointed out that under the implementing rules and regulations of Republic Act No. 9184, or the Government Procurement Reform Act of 2003, only those “duly organized under the laws of the Philippines, and which at least 60 percent of the outstanding capital stocks belong to citizens of the Philippines, shall be eligible to participate in the bidding of supply of goods.”
Herrera, citing statistics from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control based in Stockholm, Sweden, said that as of Nov. 5, at least 6,394 people had been killed by the H1N1 flu virus worldwide.
The top five countries with the most fatalities are Brazil, 1,368; United States, 1,004; Argentina, 593; India, 478; and Mexico, 377.
In Southeast Asia, the top five countries with the most deaths are Thailand, 184; Malaysia, 77; South Korea, 45; the Philippines, 30; and Singapore, 18.
Herrera said that before the DOH decided to acquire the four machines, only four laboratories in the country had been performing the H1N1 flu tests: The DOH’s Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Muntinlupa City, The Medical City in Pasig City, the Lung Center of the Philippines in Quezon City and the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City.
All four laboratories have been using the Qiagen Rotor Gene Q Real-Time PCR Machine distributed by Macare and none of them has used Roche’s Light Cycler 480 Real-Time PCR Machine, he said.
