DPWH Chief urges contractors to comply with projects' specs

“Do good to your country by being truthful in the implementation of your projects. That’s the least you can do to pay back the taxpayers, after all, they’re the ones paying for your services”, said Public Works and Highways Rogelio L. Singson as he appeals for the contractors’ sense of patriotism in implementing government projects.

While procurement for the 9,278 projects valued at P269.7 Billion for CY 2015 infrastructure program has started, Singson asks the contractors to help in the Department’s transparency and accountability efforts by not conniving with anyone or giving “commissions” to anyone including DPWH employees, politicians or with other contractors in securing projects from DPWH. Instead, the contractors are told to give the best price and follow specifications. 

Singson also appealed to the contractors to strictly comply with the approved plans and specifications. “Do not shortchange the Filipino people by engaging yourselves to corrupt practices,” he added. 

With considerable increase of infrastructure investments programmed in the 2015 national budget, DPWH has enough public works projects for qualified and competent contractors. 

However, there are still reports that contractors are giving advance payments to unscrupulous individuals peddling projects in exchange for a promise of bagging government contracts. Nobody in DPWH can commit projects to anyone. 

“As corruption perception survey results in the past has shown positive improvement of the Department due to its transformation program to include efficiency and transparency in the procurement process, we continue to appeal to the contractors to refrain from colluding with either DPWH employees or with other contractors”, added Singson.

To lessen opportunities for collusion, DPWH has simplified the bidding process with only five documentary requirements and eliminated the submission of letter of intent to encourage participation of more bidders. DPWH also no longer accepts credit line certification from banks to augment financial contracting capacity which is also another source of corruption. 

DPWH is also monitoring the contractors who just participate in many of the biddings without any intention of winning any bid as evidenced by the variance from the approved budget for the contract. 

To date, there are at least 89 blacklisted contractors in the list of the Construction Industry Authority of the Philippines (CIAP). (DPWH)