The Makati city hall. Photo from www.makati.gov.ph
MANILA, Philippines—The price of the senior citizen cake is a little more than P300, not P1,000.
This was the statement released by the Makati City government on the allegation that the cakes given to senior citizens in the city during their birthdays or during silver wedding anniversaries were purchased at P1,000 each, an amount way over the P300-P600 usual price of cakes sold in local bakeshops.
City administrator Eleno Mendoza noted that they purchased the cakes at only P306.75 each.
“The figure cited by Mr. Renato Bondal is totally false. Our documents will prove that and we will submit these documents to the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee,” Mendoza said.
City spokesperson Joey Salgado, on the other hand, said that Bondal’s discussion of the cake issue during the probe on Wednesday was a “crude attempt” to use the Senate “as a platform to raise malicious, baseless and non-existent allegations against the Binay family.
“We would want to see Mr. Bondal show documents to prove his claim that the cakes were priced at P1,000. The city government has all the documents, and the purchases went through bidding as required by law,” Salgado added.
He added that Bondal has been trying to show a pattern of lies that started with his claim of the overpriced Makati parking building and other infrastructure projects in the city.
The Commission on Audit on Wednesday said that it would conduct a special audit of the construction of the alleged overpriced parking building noting that there could be “red flags” like the division of the project in several phases.
The 11-story building with parking lots and offices is the subject of a plunder charge filed by lawyer Renato Bondal and Nicolas Enciso against Makati Mayor Jejomar Erwin Binay and his father Vice President Jejomar Binay who handled the start of the building’s construction in 2007 when he was still city mayor.
Bondal, during the hearing, said that the 31,900-square-meter building cost around P84,000 per square meter, an amount way higher than the price per square meter of the 46-story Shang Grand Tower which was pegged at only P40,000 per sq.m. and the 57-story Greenbel Residences which cost P45,000 per sqm.
Binay said during the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing said that it would be “inaccurate and erroneous” to compare the mentioned private building to the city hall building “simply because building cost is determined among others by the type of building, the features of the building, and the type of soil on which the building is constructed.”
He maintained that the allegations were politically motivated and that the COA has already refuted the claims of the complainants last February in an investigation report made as a response to their request.
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