Charade at the NPO

Despite President Aquino’s pledge of good governance, things appear to remain the same at the National Printing Office (NPO).

During the country’s first-ever automated balloting in 2010, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) tapped its private partner, Smartmatic-TIM, and the NPO to supply the printed ballots used in the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines. The Comelec deviated this time around, and instead of choosing which company would supply and print the ballots, gave this task to the NPO.

Just a few weeks ago, the media discovered that the NPO had awarded a P780-million contract to supply and print 55 million ballots for the 2013 midterm elections to Holy Family Printing Corp. and its partner Canon Marketing Philippines, although this bidder had failed to pass the mandatory tests for the sample paper ballots.

The two other bidders for the contract – Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. (Smartmatic-TIM) and a consortium that includes Hewlett Packard (HP) - have protested the NPO’s decision.

The latter consortium includes Advance Group of Companies, one of the country’s biggest paper suppliers; HP which will provide the digital printers; ePDS Inc., a data processing and mail processing service company; and ASA Color Inks, which will deliver the ultraviolet (UV) inks for the ballots.

The third bidder is Smartmatic-TIM, which supplied the PCOS machines used in the 2010 national elections, the same units that will be used for the midterm balloting next year.

But the NPO surprisingly chose Holy Family over these two bidders.

Holy Family reportedly failed one crucial requirement: getting its paper ballots to fit into the PCOS machines.

When Holy Family submitted sample ballots as part of the bidding prerequisites, it brought only eight, although the required number was 1,000 ballots.

When it came to feeding the ballots into the PCOS unit, six out of the eight did not fit the machine.

The only two ballots that fit the machine passed six out of 15 times it was scanned.

The NPO should have right then and there disqualified Holy Family because of this below-par performance, but the chairperson of the Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) declared that Holy Family’s sample testing had passed.

Smartmatic-TIM’s PCOS machines got a 100 percent accuracy rating and yet its critics continue to bash its reliability. Holy Family’s passing grade was only 60 percent, which means it could fail 40 percent of the time.

Imagine the bedlam that would follow if 40 percent of the electorate are not able to vote in the 2013 elections.

The NPO-SBAC should have disqualified Holy Family outright because it had misrepresented itself when it submitted one of the bidding requirements for the contract - that the bidder should have implemented a contract worth as much as 50 percent of the cost of the project it is bidding for. In this case, the NPO pegged the floor amount for a previous project at P192 million.

Flores and Carl Jon Mucho, the lawyer of the HP-ePDS-Advance-ASA Color consortium, noted that Holy Family was favored by the SBAC despite failing a requirement.

Holy Family submitted as requirement its supposed P120 million project with the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA)  for the printing of Seafarer’s Identification and Record Books (SIRBs) and a P60 million contract with NPO for the barangay elections.

But when Smartmatic sought a clarification from MARINA, the agency replied that there was no such contract with Holy Family.

Holy Family’s deficiencies, which were exposed during the bidding are too glaring to ignore, yet the NPO let these all slide, which makes one wonder whether the process conducted by the NPO was all a charade.

The NPO disqualified Smartmatic-TIM, claiming that it failed to meet the requirement that all its ventures should be in existence for at least six years when this was not a requirement in the checklist provided the bidders.

The NPO had also disqualified the consortium for allegedly failing to submit a memorandum of agreement ensuring that its goods would be free from defects.

Both were also disqualified for failing the single biggest contract requirement, which, as mentioned earlier, was pegged at P192 million.

Thus, the NPO-SBAC decided that only Holy Family’s bid would be opened.

Imagine what would happen if ballots could not be fed into the PCOS machines, and the machines reject the ballots because of bleeding ink as what had happened when Holy Family submitted its sample paper for testing.

Tragedy waiting to happen

All 19 passengers of an airplane which crashed upon take off at the Nepal’s Kathmandu Airport on its way  to Mount Everest were killed last September shortly after it struck a bird.

Meanwhile, a US Airways passenger plane with 155 people safely  crash-landed on January 2009 at the New York’s  Hudson River  after hitting a flock of birds before touchdown.

Local airline operators are praying that the same government’s failure to promptly and decisively  drive away birds from the runways.

MIAA general manager Jose Angel Honrado has said that some 50 bird strikes around the NAIA  and local airports have been recorded this year, more than 50 percent higher than last year.  

Honrado  has  joined the call of airline operators for the closure of the nearby Las Pinas-Paranaque Habitat and Ecotourism Area, a sanctuary of migratory birds frequenting or regularly feeding on the airport grounds.

The NAIA safety division said the bird strikes, other than those recorded by the MIAA, were reported by Philippine Airlines (PAL), Cebu Pacific, Zest Air, Cathay Pacific, Jet Star Asia, Air Philippines Express and Qatar Airways.                                                                                                                                        

The operators have offered an unsolicited solution to the problem: spray herbicides right away to kill the worms and insects which the birds feed on, and that those who support keeping the bird sanctuary be held criminally liable for fatal accidents caused by bird strikes.

The habitat is home to about 80 bird species, particularly Egrets from China and around 5,000 individual birds. The bird sanctuary was proclaimed by former President Arroyo in 2009.

PAL president Ramon Ang has called for the removal of the sanctuary. Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez meanwhile has supported a study on the closure of the sanctuary also known as the Freedom Island.                     

Celso Bayabos, Civil Aviation Authority manager, said that a PAL Zamboanga flight to Manila was canceled last September after birds got sucked into the plane’s engine.

Last September, a Cebu Pacific flight was grounded at the  Maguindanao airport after its engines sucked birds. In August a PAL jet was hit by wild ducks  on its approach at the Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport in Tacloban City.  A similar incident hit  PAL  flight PR 105 from Guam in July.

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