Gatchalian questions P69M PS-DBM service fee after ‘sloppy’ laptop purchase

(FILE)  Sen. Win Gatchalian. (Voltaire F. Domingo / Senate PRIB)

MANILA, Philippines —- Is it worth paying the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) P69 million for its “sloppy work” in buying P2.4 billion worth of laptops for public school teachers?

For Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, the P69 million service fee paid by the Department of Education to the PS-DBM “is not worth the sloppy work.”

“After hearing the foregoing and the details, in my opinion, the P69 million is not worth the sloppy work, Mr. chair,” Gatchalian said during Thursday’s hearing of the Senate blue ribbon committee looking into the procurement of the alleged “pricey but outdated” laptops.

“And we’re hoping after the decades existence of the PS-DBM, they would have perfected the art of procurement. But obviously, that is not the case, and yet various government agencies are paying as high as 3 percent of their procurement price—in this particular case, P69 million for work that for obvious reasons is very sloppy and a lot of errors throughout the process,” he said.

Gatchalian made the remarks after DepEd Undersecretary Annalyn Sevilla told the Senate blue ribbon committee that DepEd paid the PS-DBM P69.2 million as a service fee for the procurement of the laptops for teachers.

While the reply action slip indicated a 4 percent service fee, Sevilla said the actual service fee paid by DepEd to the PS-DBM was only 3 percent or P69.2 million of the P2.3 billion contract price.

“We saw in one document that it was indicated that it was 4 percent so we immediately checked with the DBM—PS and we found out that it’s a typographical error in the document because the actual service fee that was deducted is only 3 percent,” she explained.

“And so the commitment under the MOA  is also 3 percent of the contract price, not 3 percent of the transferred amount,” she pointed out.

Noting this typo error and other mistakes earlier revealed during the committee’s last hearing, Gatchalian asked Sevilla if the service fee they paid to PS-DBM was worth it.

“Are you satisfied paying P69 million to PS-DBM… happy ba kayo, satisfied ba kayo sa trabaho nila? asked the senator.

“You honor, that’s really putting us on the spot,” Sevilla said.”But the reason why we are transferring the said procurement is that we depend on the specialty or the expertise of the agency. And since 2017, we did not transfer anymore to DBM-PS. It was only this Bayanihan that we again transferred…”

Sevilla also pointed out that the procurement agency usually charged 5 percent, but after they haggled and negotiated, the service fee was reduced to 3 percent.

“That’s why I really am very surprised when I saw in the reply action document na 4 percent yun kasi yun po yung talagang pinaghirapan na pababain yung service fee. So my answer to that is nakatipid po ang DepEd actually by having only 3 percent of service fee,” she further said.

(So I was very surprised when I saw the reply action document that it was 4 percent since that’s what really worked to lower the service fee. Having only a 3 percent service fee saved DepEd money.)

/MUF/abc