Losing bidder to sue Robredo over failed fire fighting deal

Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The company that won and then lost a P243-million contract to supply fire fighting equipment to the government said it would sue Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo and the head of the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) for disqualifying the firm on what it claimed to be flimsy grounds.

Kolonwel Trading said it had found no other recourse but to take legal action against BFP officer in charge Samuel Perez and Robredo.

Perez had ruled the October 2010 bidding a failure on the ground that Kolonwel failed to comply with documentary requirements. Robredo is being included in the suit for accepting Perez’s decision.

Whelma Lanzuela, a Kolonwel executive and its spokesperson, said Kolonwel will sue Perez for civil damages with a lower court, on top of filing criminal and administrative charges against Perez with the Office of Ombudsman for declaring the bidding a failure on weak grounds. She said Robredo would be sued for alleged negligence.

Fire fighting gear

The contracts involve the purchase of 4,197 sets of protective fire fighting equipment, including boots, helmets, gloves, coats and trousers.

Because of Kolonwel’s disqualification for failure to satisfy the documentary requirements, the set of four contracts has been set for rebidding to be managed by the Department of Budget and Management’s Procurement Services, according to Robredo.

But Lanzuela insisted that Kolonwel had satisfied all the requirements, including the electronic filing of its income tax returns, which was one of the grounds that Perez had cited for its disqualification.

She said the company had been enrolled in the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s electronic system since 2007 and filed its business tax returns electronically since, “except for one quarter when the return was filed manually because the BIR system was down.”

Robredo said, however, that the disqualification of Kolonwel justified, and that even the DBM Procurement Services had “verified” the grounds for it.

“[Perez’s] decision to disqualify the contract was sound after he studied the documents. In fact, I was already set to award the contract until he pointed out the irregularities,” he said.

He said Kolonwel failed to file its income tax returns electronically “for two years,” at the time of the bidding, and there were other problems with the authenticity of some documents.

In a meeting with the Inquirer, Lanzuela and Kolonwel sales manager Peter Go Cheng produced documents showing its supposed compliance with the requirements.

The Kolonwel executives pointed out that manual filing of  income tax returns was allowed in the public bidding of certain contracts with other government agencies, including the National Food Authority and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.

Go Cheng said it was highly irregular that Perez declared a failure of bidding despite the fact that the BFP’s bids and awards committee (BAC), which was reconstituted thrice, recommended the award of the contract to Kolonwel.

Nothing irregular

Lanzuela said Robredo had already committed to awarding the project to Kolonwel and its Korean partner In Seung Apparel after the interior department’s own legal team found nothing irregular in the documentation of the contracts.

But when Perez was appointed officer-in-charge in October, Lanzuela said he did not implement Robredo’s decision and instead took cognizance of the protest letters of losing bidders Panpisco Technologies and 911 Alarm, which complained about Kolonwel’s alleged failure to comply with bidding requirements.

Go Cheng said it was also suspicious that Perez chose to declare a failure of bidding rather than evaluate the next highest bidder after Kolonwel, which was 911 Alarm.

The Inquirer tried repeatedly to reach Perez for comment but a member of his staff, Inspector Carmen Clemente, said he was not available for media interviews.

Kolonwel Trading is no stranger to controversy after its executives blew the whistle on a scam involving the allegedly overpriced P427-million contract to supply the Department of Education with fortified noodles in 2010.

That contract, which was won by Jeverps Manufacturing Corp., was eventually scrapped. Kolonwel was a prospective bidder and had bought bid documents for the noodle project but did not actually join the bidding.