COA flags setbacks in DepEd’s P20-billion classroom PPP project

The Commission on Audit (COA) has called out the Department of Education over various “setbacks” in the implementation of the P20.14-billion public-private partnership projects meant to address the shortage in public school classrooms.

The COA also found that an astounding 99 percent of the beneficiary schools under the DepEd Computerization Program had not received the information and communications technology packages.

In its 2017 annual audit report, the COA said DepEd should look into the possibility of imposing “necessarily and appropriate penalty” on the contractors because delays in the PPP for School Infrastructure Program had defeated its purpose.

A total of 1,327, or 30 percent, of the 4,371 classrooms under PSIP II are still awaiting completion after more than two years of implementation.

“Based on standard time, an ordinary construction with 12 classrooms should have been completed within six months,” read the audit report.

A total of 720 of the unfinished classrooms are in the Northern Mindanao and Caraga regions and covered by the contract with the consortium of BSP & Co., Inc., and Vicente T. Lao Construction.

The reamining 607 – meant for the Cordillera Administrative Region, Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley and Central Luzon – are covered by a contract with Megawide Construction Corp.

Construction on 22 of the classrooms under the Megawide contract had not even started as of the COA’s reporting.

Auditors said the failure to complete the projects was “mainly attributed to the accessibility issues in the site,” including building permit issues and force majeure causes such as weather, security, labor scarcity, and damaged bridges.

While the COA said these could be considered as “excusable delay” under the build-lease-transfer contracts, it pointed out that these problems “were not addressed by DepEd promptly.”

“The PPP was supposed to address the backlog in classroom requirement the soonest possible time, but such expectation did not materialize as the process turns out to be slow,” lamented the report.

The COA also found delays of up to one and a half years in the completion of classrooms built under the PSIP I.

The target completion date was Feb. 8, 2014, but classrooms in the Ilocos Region, Central Luzon and Calabarzon were only finished in February, August and November 2015.

Like the PSIP II, the delays in PSIP I were “mostly attributable to incidents considered as Excusable Delays in Construction” under the BLT agreements.

Issues included the contractor’s poor selection of subcontractors, inefficient distribution of materials and inadequate supervision from the engineering staff.

On the part of the DepEd, problems included the delayed issuance of consent forms and building permits, appointment of independent contractors, and provision of access to the project sites.

The COA urged the DepEd to be more prudent and objective in evaluating the projects, strengthen coordination, closely monitor the unfinished projects, and “ensure that only those projects done in accordance with the requirements of the contract are accepted and paid.”

Meanwhile, the COA reported that only 436 of the 77,704 target schools had benefited so far from the Computerization Program from 2015 to 2017.

All 436 were covered by Batch 33 of the program for senior high schools in 2015, which actually targeted a total of 991 schools.

The P2.06 billion budget for the 17,016 schools that should have benefited from the program in 2015 was transferred in 2016 to the Department of Budget and Management Procurement Service, which specializes the procurement of technical equipment.

Still, no deliveries were made as of the end of 2017. This prompted the COA to ask the DepEd to prod the DBM-PS regarding the unutilized funds.

The contracts for the ICT packages for 11,070 schools in 2015, 5,151 in 2016 and 44,417 in 2017 were already awarded and were scheduled to be delivered before June 2018.

Besides the aforementioned projects, the COA also called on the DepEd to conduct an investigation on the loss of P25.21-million worth of learning materials caused by insufficient warehousing facilities.

This was after finding that 820,682 learning materials for second grade students were damaged at the warehouse of supplier Lexicon Press, Inc., due to defects in the gutter and downspouts that caused flooding.

The loss of the said materials was partly blamed on the DepEd’s lack of its own storage facilities, due to the delay in the procurement of forwarding services and the refurbishment of its warehouse.

Although the materials were expected to be delivered on Nov. 30, 2015, the forwarding services only started on March 31, 2016, and the refurbishment of the warehouse was contracted only in May 2016.

Because of these issues, the learning materials remained and eventually got damaged inside Lexicon’s warehouse. /atm