City won’t cancel CCMC contract

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu City government will not terminate the contract of C.E. Padilla Construction Inc., the firm undertaking the construction of the new Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) building even if it has incurred a 23 percent slippage on the completion of the first phase.

“Yeah (there’s slippage). But if we’re going to cancel the project now and rebid the whole thing, it will take years. They’re trying to salvage with what we have now,” Mayor Tomas Osmeña told reporters.

Last Sunday should have been the completion date for Phase 1 of the new CCMC hospital building since the contractor started the construction in July 2015.

However, the construction hit several delays because of the issues on building permits, among other reasons.

The 23 percent slippage, which is higher than the 15 percent slippage standard of the Department of Public Works and Highways, could be a basis for the city to terminate the contract.

But Osmeña said the termination of the contract would be a reason for further delay of the completion of the hospital building.

“Because remember, this is not a road. If there’s slippage in a road, we can always stop and you can continue because you can see the road, you’ll just add more cement or more this. But this is a hospital and there are many components there. You cannot just have somebody to come in,” he said.

Osmeña said it is hard to do public bidding for the remaining works of a hospital building since you have to be very detailed on what works have been accomplished and what are the works that still have to be accomplished.

The mayor admitted that questions of the Commission on Audit (COA) might be one of the problems because the city government ought to follow and conform to government requirements.

That is why he would have wanted to retrofit the CCMC building than build a new one.

On February 24, 2014, then mayor Michael Rama ordered the demolition of the 45-year-old hospital building due to massive damage from the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that hit Central Visayas in 2013.

Osmeña said he has inherited the problems started by the previous administration like the locational clearance, building permit, design of the building, among others.

“And we’re going to do it but it’s not going to be smooth because we took over a very anomalous situation. It could have been finished years ago when we just repaired it,” he said.

City Engineer Kenneth Enriquez said she will just meet with Osmeña to discuss the project within the week.  (FREEMAN)