Time to replace existing pork barrel with new system

The sound and fury whipped up nationwide by the highly troubling exposé of the P10-billion pork barrel scam, which implicated five senators and 23 representatives, will very likely not die down anytime soon. The Filipino people are that incensed—and rightly so!

It’s time Congress decided to do away completely with the present practice of providing annually each senator with P200 million and each member of the House of Representatives P70 million, to be spent as they wish. This is a practice that has proven very vulnerable to corruption; it should be scrapped altogether as soon as possible.

I propose that we adopt the system used in the past, where only executive departments were charged with designing and constructing infrastructure of all kinds. But this time around, we make sure, through a binding law, that all departments, without exceptions, conduct an open public bidding, to be announced in mass media, of each and every infrastructure that will be built.

Only bona fide and solvent contractors, with good, qualified, reputable track records, and with the requisite array of heavy and light equipment, as well as sufficient experience, should be allowed to participate in such public biddings. All bids should be in writing and should be evaluated by the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) of the department concerned, in the presence of two “outsiders” representing separately the Commission on Audit and the Department of Justice. The BAC should determine the best from among the bids submitted, on the basis of a set of criteria.

Upon reaching a decision, the BAC shall then make a public announcement of the winning bid. The decision shall be concurred in by the COA and DOJ representatives.

The winning contractor shall then be required to post a performance bond equal to 10 percent of the cost of the project to be undertaken, to ensure that the project will be implemented strictly according to designs, timelines and quality. The performance bond shall be withheld until such time that the contractor is found to be in full compliance with the contract.

The proposed system will reduce to the very minimum collusion, malfeasance and fraud of any kind. It will not be perfect but it can admit further refinements dictated by actual experience.

—MARIANO PATALINJUG,

[email protected]