Palace says OPS ‘shopping list reasonable’

Malacañang clarified reports yesterday that the "shopping list" presented by the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS) for next year included high-end vehicles and equipment to improve its capability in communications, particularly in broadcast media.

Radio Television Malacañang (RTVM) executive director Milton Alingod told The STAR the requests they made were reasonable and that it must be noted that his office has not been given any appropriations in quite a while.

"The laptops costing P200,000 each are not your regular laptops," Alingod said. "These are high-end teleprompters that President Arroyo will use."

He said these laptops have high-quality video-graphics, video-editing, two-dimensional animation capacity and video-streaming capabilities.

He also said the RTVM has to catch up with advances in technology — particularly in broadcast media — since it was also servicing private television networks and radio stations that use modern equipment and facilities.

He said the studio lights costing over P500,000 each came with their own tripods and hard cases: "These come in sets."

Alingod said RTVM should also have new sports utility vehicles that can keep pace with the presidential convoy, even in the mountainous areas visited by Mrs. Arroyo: "Our (Mitsubishi) Adventure sometimes cannot run fast enough anymore to keep up with the rest of the convoy."

He said most of the RTVM vehicles were already more than 10 years old: "Our 30-seater van can no longer negotiate (roads to) Baguio. We need this when we go out-of-town to cover the President."

"We need to be up to date too," Alingod said. "We have not been included in the outlay for a long time now."

He said other RTVM equipment must be upgraded as well, because most of these facilities are still analog machines while other TV networks are already using digital technology.

"We cannot give them tapes anymore, they use DVDs now," Alingod said.

The P1.7-million SUV, P50,000 lapel microphones, laptops costing over P200,000 each and studio lights costing P500,000 each are among the items in the OPS shopping list for next year.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita also defended the OPS shopping list, saying the OPS’ desire to improve its efficiency should not be taken negatively.

The listing details where Bunye’s office and its attached agencies intend to use the P89.5 million capital outlay they are seeking for 2007. — Aurea Calica