Allegedly overpriced Makati High impresses senators

Video by INQUIRER.net’s Ryan Leagogo

MANILA, Philippines—It would be anyone’s dream high school.

The classrooms are spacious, well-lit and ventilated. An audio-visual room, with theater-like seats, could rival a top university’s. The speech lab comes with glass booths and headsets. The dormitory is furnished with bunk beds, and there are lockers to store one’s belongings.

Makati Science High School. Photo from www.makatiscience.edu.ph

This is the P1.3-billion 10-story Makati Science High School, now the subject of an investigation by the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee for allegedly being built at an overprice.

“Compared to other buildings I’ve been to, I’m satisfied with what I’ve seen. It looks sturdy,” Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III told reporters after a nearly hour-long ocular inspection of the building on Kalayaan Avenue in Makati.

But his colleague, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, was skeptical about the price tag for each classroom which would come to P24.68-million, without taking into consideration the open spaces and other amenities.

“The building itself, by observation, is nice. But the question here is, did we pay the right price? This is what we’ll determine,” Trillanes said. “If the floor has gold plating, we can understand.”

Citing Department of Education (DepEd) data, Trillanes said a classroom in a single story building costs under P1 million, and in a four-story building P2 million.

The building has 54 classrooms—35 regular rooms, 18 labs and special classrooms, and one reading center.

The building also has a basement, roof deck, an auditorium on two floors, and open space that allows one to look down from any of the floors at the lobby.

On the ground floor are the administrative offices and biology labs. The second floor houses the computer and speech labs and the audio-visual room, while the general science, chemistry and physics labs are on the third floor.

The regular classrooms are on the fourth to seventh floors. Also on the fourth floor are the electronics and robotics labs. The eighth floor houses the dormitory which has 20 rooms that can accommodate 240 students. Between the rooms are the toilets and shower rooms.

The auditorium, yet unfinished, is on the ninth and 10th floors.

The building has two elevators that can carry 17 persons each. Behind the elevators are the student lockers. It has a spacious staircase rising from the ground floor to the top of the building.

Federico Cuervo, president and CEO of Cuervo Valuers & Advisory Inc., who joined the ocular inspection, acknowledged that the high school’s facilities were far better than any public high school’s.

He, however, said the classrooms should cost “much less” than P24.68 million each.

“I didn’t compute it yet, but definitely it’s much less… We don’t know yet how much per square meter,” Cuervo said of the building which has a gross floor area of 23,029 square meters.

He said he’ll be ready to provide the cost of each classroom when the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee resumes its inquiry into the corruption allegations against Vice President Jejomar Binay on Tuesday.

Pimentel steered clear of the issue of whether it was overpriced following the inspection.

“I will not comment on the issue because an ocular will not be able to answer the issue,” he said.

The senators inspected most of the rooms on all the floors.

School engineer Ramon Zoleta, who showed the senators around along with City Administrator Eleno Mendoza and principal Evangelina Apolinario, declined to respond to the senators’ questions.

“That’s for them to explain,” Zoleta said, referring to the city officials. “There’s a reason behind all this. Otherwise, I have no authority to speak on the matter.”

Some 870 students, from Makati and other cities, are enrolled in the Makati Science HS, which was turned over to DepEd in February this year.

Lawyer Renato Bondal, who filed a plunder complaint against Binay and his son, current Makati Mayor Junjun Binay, over the Makati City Hall Building II office and car park, has alleged that this was the priciest high school building yet. He claimed it was overpriced by P862 million.

The camp of Vice President Binay said Friday the senators who conducted an ocular inspection of the Makati Science High School building hastily concluded that it was overpriced.

“The construction of the Makati Science High School underwent a public bidding as required by law. The project also passed the audit by the Commission on Audit,” Joey Salgado, spokesperson of Binay, said in a statement on Saturday.

“On the mere say so of Renato Bondal and after a cursory inspection, the senators already made conclusions of overpricing. This is no surprise to us since the senators had prejudged the issue from the start,” Salgado said.

Salgado said Bondal’s claim was “outrageous,” not anchored on logic but on fuzzy math.

“He conveniently overlooks the fact that the total construction cost includes the cost of the school’s foundation, finishing and facilities. His claim of overpricing in both the Makati City Hall Building II and the Makati Science High School falls into the same category,” he said.

“It’s guesswork or hula hula that won’t pass scrutiny in a court of law.” Salgado said. With a report from Niña P. Calleja

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