Senator Grace Poe and Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya. FILE PHOTOS BY JOSEPH VIDAL/PRIB
“It does not take an expert to analyze the failures of management. Just ask the passengers who line up for hours and experience the stalling trains, the out-of-order elevators and escalators, the broken air-con units, among others.”
This was Sen. Grace Poe’s reply Thursday to Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya, who assailed the report of her subcommittee on public services on Wednesday recommending that the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate his department in connection with the operation of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) 3.
Sen. Sergio Osmeña III, acting chair of the Senate committee on public services, said he was approving Poe’s draft report. “It’s quite accurate,” he told reporters in an ambush interview Thursday.
“It was a good thing she was able to get the gist of the problem and she asked the DOJ to investigate this. The Ombudsman and the DOJ are the ones that will be able to establish if there is a prima facie case … to file a case for graft,” he said.
Negligence, inaction
Osmeña said he was willing to transmit the report to the Ombudsman even without the majority signatures. The signatures are not needed for the Ombudsman investigation to commence, he said.
In the evening rush hour Thursday, the tram stalled again, stranding yet again tens of thousands of hapless commuters that poured on Edsa and igniting yet another monster gridlock.
Poe’s 45-page report said there were “badges of negligence and inaction” by officials of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) led by Abaya “indicating callous indifference and acts disadvantageous to the commuters, the Filipino public and the government.”
“We are not worried,” Abaya said in a press conference Thursday. “Our conscience is clear. We have strictly implemented the procurement law in the DOTC.”
In a statement Thursday, Poe said the findings of her panel were based on transcripts of records and documents submitted to her panel, as well as testimonies and dossiers from government agencies. Her panel also got input from the private sector, transport advocates, people’s organizations and private citizens.
In Abaya’s case, she said the transcripts, documents he submitted, his reply to questions, his actions during the hearing, his excuses for his absence, his demeanor and knowledge of his department, and the totality of his actions on transport issues and the MRT 3 “indicate badges of negligence and failure.”
In her report, Poe also said the DOTC’s contract with Dalian for the purchase of 48 light rail vehicles [LRV], which was awarded without the required consent of MRT Corp. [MRTC], was “highly suspicious on several grounds.”
She said MRTC had been pushing for the purchase of additional LRVs since 2004. It also wrote to the DOTC to call for capacity expansion, but the department never responded.
Bribery attempt
Poe also noted that there had been reports of an alleged bribery attempt on LRV manufacturer Inekon, a top company in the Czech Republic.
Furthermore, the DOTC refused, for reasons known only to it, to hear out the proposal of Sumitomo Corp., the original and former maintenance service provider of the MRT, she said.
Sumitomo had wanted to return as service provider so long as it would also be tasked to rehabilitate the railway system. Its proposal for rehabilitation included the purchase of new trains.
Poe also said the DOTC had chosen Dalian to provide new LRVs even if the company “has no established impeccable reputation as a manufacturer of LRVs.” The award of the contract to Dalian was too late, she added.
She also questioned DOTC’s motive considering that it ignored other proposals.
“It is as if the DOTC has been waiting all along for a ‘friendly’ bidder that could ‘cooperate’ with the DOTC, especially due to reports of a prior bribery attempt in relation to Inekon,” she said.
The injury to the riding public and the government were apparent, she said. “Unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference might have been accorded to Dalian,” she said.
“Accordingly, the DOTC might have acted with manifest partiality, evident bad faith in relation with MRTC or, simply, gross inexcusable negligence in allowing the MRT 3 to deteriorate by not immediately implementing capacity expansion by purchasing new LRVs to cater to the exponential increase of MRT 3 ridership through the years,” she said.
Recycled positions
Thursday’s DOTC press briefing turned personal as Abaya took aim at what he described as information recycled from public positions made by businessman Robert Sobrepeña, who is behind the MRT 3’s private sector owner and has been at odds with the DOTC in recent years.
The row between both camps has spanned the change in the MRT 3 maintenance provider, the acquisition of 48 new train coaches from China’s Dalian Locomotive and Rolling Stock Co., and the buyout of MRT 3, which includes the Sobrepeña-led group.
“If you read it carefully, most of the points raised in the report are the same lines of Mr. Sobrepeña,” Abaya said.
He added that Sobrepeña had no credibility, recalling his other businesses such as the College Assurance Plan, which had defaulted on its obligations to plan holders.
“The same individual who complicates the situation, has no credibility, is coloring the committee report,” Abaya said.
Abaya acknowledged that services needed to improve at the MRT 3, which suffers from breakdowns following years of neglect as many of its trains now remain unserviceable. The train line currently serves close to 600,000 people per day, despite its design capacity of just 350,000 per day.
New trains from China would help alleviate the issue, although the complete delivery of these will not be done until early 2017.
The DOTC also awarded late last year a line’s three-year maintenance contract to the Filipino-Korean venture of Busan Transportation Corp., Edison Development and Construction, Tramat Mercantile, Inc., TMICorp Inc. and Castan Corp.