VICE President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte has asked the Commission on Audit to conduct a fraud audit into the P2.4 billion purchase of pricey yet outdated laptops for public school teachers by the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management.
Education Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III said Duterte gave the department marching orders to formally ask COA Chairperson Jose Calida to conduct the audit last Friday.
“Ever since the Audit Observation Memorandum of COA came out we have been discussing this but it was only on Friday that we were given a clearance, a directive to send a fraud audit request to COA, that is why on Friday we signed it and it was received by the COA resident auditor,” Densing said in a press briefing at the Bulwagan ng Karunungan at the DepEd main office in Pasig City during the launching of this year’s Oplan Balik Eskwela Command Center.
Densing said it is up to the COA when it would finish the audit.
“We cannot answer how long COA would conduct the fraud audit,” Densing said, adding all parties will be given the chance to explain their side on the controversy.
Densing also clarified that the budget used for the purchase of the laptops did not come from the DepEd annual budget but from the Bayanihan funding at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the controversy generated by the purchase of the laptops, Densing said the DepEd executive committee has unanimously decided to do its own procurement in the future rather than go through the PS-DBM.
Last week, the DepEd said it is looking at asking the supplier of the outdated laptops purchased for P2.4 billion to replace the gadgets with a newer version if the specifications are not up to par to what is needed by the department for teachers.
The purchase of the laptops took place during the previous administration, with Leonor Briones at the helm of DepEd.
COA said the DepEd paid P58,300 for each laptop even if its Approved Budget for the Contract set only P35,046.50 per unit or an excess of P23,253.50 per unit.
COA said due to the 66-percent price jack-up, the DepEd had to rethink its original plan to provide laptops to 68,500 teachers, with the number reduced by almost half to just 39,583.
The joint venture of Sunwest Construction and Development Corporation (SCDC) and LDLA Marketing & Trading Inc., which supplied the laptops, said the laptops delivered were competitively priced and performed according to their purpose.