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By Francis Earl A. Cueto Reporter
After recently winning a petition
on executive privilege at the Supreme Court, Romulo Neri may have to
brace for another battle, this time at the Commission on Higher
Education (CHED).
He is the chairman of the
commission.
Neri’s foe? The builder of a
nearly P300-million call center, a project of the commission that
was said to have been completed during the term of Dr. Carlito Puno.
The
building that houses the call center, according to Edgardo Bansale,
vice president and official representative for E-Global Services,
may become a “white elephant.”
Bansale told The Manila Times
during a recent interview that they have not been paid for the job
despite having turned over the building to the commission months
ago. The building, he said, has since been unused.
Bansale revealed that they have
remained unpaid for the past seven months. He appealed to Neri
“not to starve” them and the families of their employees.
Bansale also disclosed that last
month, they had to lay off some 100 employees. He explained that
they could only stay in business if they were paid by the commission
for finishing the call-center building.
In seeking payment, Bansale said,
he is not picking a fight with Neri or with other officials of the
government agency. Rather, he added, he fears that the Senate would
come in and investigate the alleged failure of Neri to settle the
bill. Bansale said they are open to any possible probe but, he
added, the inquiry could give Neri a “headache.”
Bansale pointed out that all he
wants is for E-Global Services to be paid and for the commission to
start running the call center for the benefit of students and the
“booming” call-center industry as well.
Under the project, the students
will be trained to be call-center agents, with actual calls being
done and made, in preparation for their exposure in jobs related to
the business.
Business process outsourcing, or
BPO, reputedly is the biggest industry in the Philippines and the
fastest-rising contributor to the economy.
Most graduates supposedly prefer
to work as call-center agents, attracted by high entry-level
salaries that the jobs offer.
The call-center project hit the
wall after Nona Ricafort claimed that she was misled into signing
the allegedly anomalous contract for the call-center project. She
was once the acting chief of the commission and a signatory to the
project. The project is being renegotiated.
Neri then ordered that payment
for the project be stopped pending investigation. He was made to
head the commission by President Gloria Arroyo last year shortly
after he was linked to another controversial project—the
$330-million national broadband network project between the
Philippine government and China’s ZTE Corp.
A Commission on Audit report on
operations of the commission in 2007 showed that the P298.6-million
contract signed by Puno with a consortium led by E-Global Services
contains provisions that are “at the least ambiguous and at the
most grossly disadvantageous” to the government.
Bansale contended that the report
stated that the project carried terms which were ambiguous. But, he
said, the report did not state that the contract was anomalous.
In their evaluation, auditors
noted that while the consortium will be paid by the commission
P298.6 million for setting up six call centers and operating them
for five years, the company will only pay P126 million in annual
lease rental payment to the commission.
The Commission on Audit said the
contract bore provisions that gave all the advantages to the
consortium at the expense of the government. It added that there was
a provision in the contract stating that the consortium can
unilaterally terminate its business contract with the Commission on
Higher Education any time and for any reason just by paying it a
penalty of a maximum amount of P5 million.
Bansale expressed hope that they
will be paid soonest.
“We cooperated very well in all
investigations because we have nothing to hide about the project.
All we want is to be part of something beneficial in the future,”
he said.
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