MRTC a private, not public, entity

THIS REFERS to Randy David’s column titled “The audit function” (Opinion, 7/19/15), wherein he mentioned that the core problem in fraudulent government payments is the “procurement process” which is “behind the present problems of the Land Transportation Office and the Metro Rail Transit Corp.”

We wish to clarify that the Metro Rail Transit Corp. (MRTC) is a private domestic corporation and is NOT an agency of the Department of Transportation and Communications. MRTC is not involved in whatever procurement process being undertaken by the DOTC, specifically for the MRT3 system.

If David is referring to the reported irregularities in the procurement of an MRT3 maintenance provider and huge payments to the maintenance provider, those are actions exclusively DOTC’s, done in its capacity as operator of the MRT3 train system.

—TOMAS T. DE LEON JR., chair, Metro Rail Transit Corp.