11 Tesda officials face raps for alleged bid rigging

MANILA, Philippines — The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) is pursuing a case against 11 officials accused of rigging the bidding for the purchase of P1.4 billion worth of special tool kits to favor a contractor.

The TESDA board of officers has tapped its employee Armina Tayko-Villanueva for the filing of a complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman.

Villanueva will lead the filing of a complaint against her colleagues Pilar de Leon, Imelda Ong, Luz Victoria Amponin, Maria Magdalena Butad, Renato Geron, Gaspar Gayona, Dante Navarro, Maria Clara Ignacio, Gracia dela Rama, Conrado Duque and Leonardo Pinac for violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Law.

Villanueva based her complaint on the TESDA board’s findings of irregularities in the bidding process involving procurement of P1.4 billion worth of starter tool kits on Special Training for Employment Program (STEP). 

The 11 respondents were former members of TESDA’s bids and awards committee.

To enable them to rig the bidding, the 11 officials reportedly invalidated the claim of the winning bidder to cause a rebidding in favor of their long-standing contractor ACMI, which lost during the first round of procurement bids for lack of competency and standing.

TESDA records showed most of the contracts entered by the agency had ACMI as third party supplier. Some of these contracts involved procurement of vehicles, production of printed materials and several others.

Villanueva tagged De Leon, chief of TESDA’s administrative services office, as the mastermind.

She said De Leon manipulated the multimillion-peso payments to several ghost training schools in Regions 3 and 4, based on an investigation initiated by former TESDA chief Guiling Mamondiong.

Mamondiong earlier appointed Villanueva as head of a team which investigated De Leon and Ong over the alleged continued payment by TESDA of several firms already closed and not operating as training skills schools, yet received multimillion-peso payments after presenting TESDA coupons. 

On Jan. 25, Villanueva lodged an administrative complaint against 11 officials before the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission. PACC head Dante Jimenez vowed to initiate a probe on the anomaly.