Ex-Usec Mercado: No money solicited in official DepEd program

MANILA, Philippines — Former Undersecretary Gloria Jumamil Mercado has denied Vice President Sara Duterte’s allegations that she was let go from the Department of Education (DepEd) for soliciting money from private companies, stating that there was no money involved in that issue.

Mercado also clarified before the House of Representatives committee on good government and public accountability on Wednesday that the issue raised by Duterte was actually an official government program — a system that would have allowed Duterte to contact teachers wherever she may be.

According to Mercado, the allegation that she solicited P16 million from private companies was one of the reasons cited by Duterte’s chief-of-staff, Undersecretary Zuleika Lopez, when she asked Mercado to resign from DepEd.

“The second one is, Zuleika mentioned that I solicited from two agencies, so I explained to her that it was a program which our strand developed. There were two consultants from Unicef to develop the app, and then we asked our external partnership office to look for external partners who will be presenting the program because we developed the concept,” Mercado said.

“It’s DepEd-Guro, it’s her being able to contact the 980,000 teachers — it’s like a means for her to talk to teachers wherever she may be.  The second one was for us to do an electronic mode of the RQA (Registry of Qualified Applicants), parang there’s no human intervention anymore,” she added.  “Everyone uploads the credential, even the computation of the teacher qualification is already on […] there is no human intervention. So that was the program.”

According to Mercado, the DepEd’s external partnership was in charge of inviting the partners or corporations that may be willing to assist in crafting the program.

“It wasn’t us who chose who would be the partners who would be invited.  It was the external partnership.  So we made a presentation to almost all the corporations.  And then some of the corporations appreciated that it’s a very important program.  So some of them committed to buy, kasi what we did is we divided the total fund of P16 million into chewable chunks,” she explained.

“But there were two corporations who were willing to fund because we wanted to put one in Mindanao, one in Visayas, and one in Luzon.  So there were two who committed to fund the full package.  And those were the two corporations that Usec Zuleika said I solicited (from). So I explained properly.  I did not solicit, there’s no money involved there. These are equipment, walang cash po doon,” she added.

Earlier, Mercado claimed that Lopez asked her to resign from office after she raised several concerns regarding the procurement of the agency’s computerization program.

Mercado said this request from Lopez came after she opposed suggestions from former Education assistant secretary Reynold Munsayac that bidders in the computerization program should just “discuss among themselves” the fate of the bidding.

Furthermore, Mercado said other DepEd officials were asked to resign too.

READ: Ex-DepEd exec: VP Duterte’s staff asked me to resign over purchase issue

Aside from this, Mercado said that envelopes containing money that supposedly came from Duterte may have been meant to influence her as she used to head the DepEd’s procuring division.

Mercado testified that when she was designated in February 2023 as head of DepEd’s procuring entity, envelopes were handed to her by Assistant Secretary Sunshine Fajarda, who then said that the envelopes directly came from Duterte.

READ: Alleged ‘envelopes’ from Duterte may have aimed to influence ex-DepEd Usec

But Duterte in a briefing on Wednesday — held while the House panel was hearing Mercado’s testimony — said that Mercado was a mere “disgruntled” former undersecretary who was “let go” after soliciting P16 million from a private company.

But Mercado said the two companies being tagged with her have expressed willingness to issue an affidavit that she did not solicit any money.

“In fact, the two corporations are willing to give an affidavit that I have no solicitation from them of P16 million,” Mercado noted.