After two years of participating in the Regional Project Monitoring Committee and the Infrastructure and Utilities Development Committee meetings of the RDC as a member of the Private Sector, nothing surprises me anymore.
Specifically, I get the feeling that criticizing government projects will not lead to solutions because Project Implementors can get away with anything. Rules need to be implemented to achieve what they have been set out to do. But rules are just rules. These can easily be bent.
It still takes people to enforce the rules. If the stakes are financially high, enforcing the rules or putting the hammer down can be wishful thinking. Enforcing rules on billions of pesos worth of projects involved seems impossible.
Who Plays Blind
No, it is not the system. It is about people who play blind, who look the other way.
Case in point: not even a 37 percent negative slippage can disqualify a contractor from pursuing other projects in the government, this time a bigger one, the Babatngon Port. Phase I of the Airport project is not yet completed (11 percent negative slippage) but the same contractor already bagged the contract for the Babatngon Port project.
The award was made without much fanfare which is quite surprising.
The start of the project which Taclobanons have clamored for over the last thirty years was started unannounced.
It only came out during the meeting when the presenter of the Feasibility Study requested an endorsement of the study. And she was asked if the project was being implemented. She said yes.
Even Before Endorsement
The committee was surprised to find out that the Department of Transportation awarded the project before the Feasibility Study was completed and endorsed.
We can appreciate quick action, but this one is different.
The award was premature. Somebody at DOTr is sleeping on the job or does not know his job. Another revelation made by the Consultant of the FS is that the Financial Internal Rate of Return of the Project is negative.
This means that the project should not have been endorsed at all, or measures to make the rate positive in the long run should have been recommended.
As mentioned above, rules are simply rules. As a former boss of mine said, nobody gives a hoot.
Check the Source
Some more tidbits about the Tacloban Airport Development Project are mentioned below. Phases I and II had a cost overrun of around 300 million pesos.
On top of that, it was delayed by two years. My computation for lost income to the region was at 5 billion pesos per year of delay.
When President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. announced last week when he was in Tacloban City that the project would be completed by 2026, he did not mention that he ordered the speeding up of the project because it is already suffering from a two-year delay.
Of course, the implementing agency (CAAP) did not tell him of the three hundred million pesos cost overrun. And nobody told him of the foregone income from tourist receipts.
This is the main reason why I am no longer surprised when I hear announcements like these.
It is par for the course, as gofers would say. It comes with the territory. It is tantamount to saying - do not believe what you hear or read, Check the source first.
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