CRIMINAL and administrative complaints have been filed before the Office of the Ombudsman against former and active officials of the Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA) and executives of maintenance contractors of the LRT Line 2.
The 52-page complaint filed by lawyer Gerry Francisco named as respondents former LRTA head executive assistant (now Philippine National Railways general manager Jeremy Regino), LRTA Administrator Hernando Cabrera, deputy administrator for operations and engineering Paul Chua, former LRTA engineering and maintenance head Federico Canar Jr., Legal Department head Jose Jobel Belarmino, LRTA senior engineers Cesar Legaspi and Hilfred Tusing, and Procurement Division head Aylwinston Pillos.
Named co-respondents were MultiScan Corp and Brownsteel Corp executives Yolanda Ong-Ramos and Joseph Ramos, representatives of Woojin Industrial Machinery Co. Ltd. of Korea, and Ma. Grazia Lee, representative of Worldleaders Transport Corp.
Francisco sought their indictment for alleged violations of RA 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and RA 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act.
Against the former and incumbent LRTA officials, he leveled charges of grave misconduct, gross incompetence, gross neglect of duty, serious dishonesty, and violations of RA 6713 or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.
Francisco claimed the respondent LRTA officials conspired with the maintenance contractors of LRT-2 to defraud the government by jacking up the cost of replacement of capital spares for the LRT train sets, specifically the train monitoring system (TMS) and the propulsion unit.
He said the AMSCO Joint Venture composed of APT Global Inc., Multiscan Corp, and Opus Land Inc. was awarded the maintenance contract worth P223.303 million in 2018.
The contract was for five years, with the condition that the contractor must provide satisfactory performance for the first three years before being allowed to continue for the remaining two years.
But on September 11, 2019, Multiscan told LRTA that the LRT-2 train sets were running on Toshiba brand of TMS and propulsions systems which are no longer available due to “obsolescence.”
He said Multiscan then proposed to upgrade the needed parts equivalent to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) but only for three train sets to the tune of P230.135 million.
Francisco noted that the original contract covered 10 train sets at P223.303 million but the Multiscan proposal was for only three train sets at a higher cost of P230.135 million.
Based on the contract with AMSCO JV, the proposed brand manufacturer for propulsion units and TMS was identified as Phil Tech Engineering.
However, in the proposed upgrade, Francisco said Ong-Ramos of MultiScan did not offer Phil Tech Engineering to do the upgrade but instead named Woojin of Korea based on her letter dated February 8, 2021.
He said respondent LRTA officials supported the upgrade works. including the dismantling of the Toshiba-brand equipment on train sets that are “good and running” to allow Woojin to do a reverse engineering of the parts and to test them on the revenue line once they were delivered.
The complainant said the testing cost revenue losses to the LRT- 2 line to the tune of P911,680 per day.
Since TS No. 17 was tested from April 29 to August 18, 2021; TS No. 09 from August 31, 2021 to January 10, 2022; and TS 14 from February 09 to April 25, 2022, Francisco computed the losses to have accumulated to P274.416 million.
In the case of Worldleaders Transport Corp, he questioned the lack of action on the part of the LRTA officials to put the supplier on the blacklist despite having “repeatedly reneged on its contractual obligations.”
He said there were contracts in 2012 (signaling parts), 2016 (eccentric posts and sleeves), and 2017 (signaling spare parts) that the firm supposedly did not deliver but it was still repeatedly allowed to participate in subsequent bidding of LRTA contracts.
“It must be stressed that when Worldleaders filed to completely deliver all the items in its cancelled or terminated contracts, it caused damage to the LRTA which affected the latter’s revenues. Thus, when Worldleaders breached its contractual obligations…, it should have been blacklisted by LRTA,” he pointed out.
