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By Yvonne T. Chua
Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism
First of two parts
IN 2001 the school board of Quezon City bought
57,100 copies of Resty Umali’s Tayo’y Mag-awitan sa Koro. The
cost: P4.1 million, at a time when the city was still suffering from
a shortage of textbooks in at least 14 subjects.
The supplementary text on music was not even in
the Department of Education’s (DepEd) catalog of approved titles
and was not listed in the annual procurement plan for the year. The
purchase also violated procedures: a supplementary annual
procurement plan to cover it was submitted only the day after the
books were accepted.
According to the Commission on Audit (COA), the
books were not used at all because the principals deemed it not
suited for grade-school students.
For decades, the public school system has been
suffering from a shortage of books. The problem was not only a
shortage of funds but the massive corruption and inefficiency that
have characterized government textbook procurements since the 1970s.
The good news is that since 1999, DepEd
secretaries have implemented reforms in textbook procurements so
that most of the 17.3 million public school students who will start
trekking to school when classes officially open today can expect to
have one book each in at least three core subjects in the lower
grade levels.
Only five years ago, one textbook was being
shared by every six pupils in grade school and by every eight
students in high school. Today, because of stringent bidding
procedures at the national level and a massive infusion of foreign
funds, the DepEd hopes that by the end of the school year, all
students will each have a textbook in all five core subjects.
But problems remain at the local level. The
Quezon City experience illustrates that despite far-reaching
reforms, the government’s textbook procurement program still has
major kinks. Although there has been a cleanup at the top, textbook
publishers interviewed for this report say that corruption remains
pervasive in many of the DepEd’s 150 schools divisions (a division
handles anywhere from 50 to 700 schools) and the local school boards
that fall directly under mayors or governors.
In interviews, publishers and agents revealed
that bribery is still the norm in the awarding of contracts for
textbooks to schools divisions and to local school boards. Just like
before, payoffs and perks (including overseas trips for school
officials), not real need, are the prime considerations in the
purchase of textbooks for public schools.
One textbook agent even says, “Our lives
depend on the superintendents or the mayors. If you’re not close
to them and you have nothing to give, they’re not going to get
their books from you.”
To be sure, payoffs–more commonly called
“SOP” or “tapon” (throwaway) in government–no longer add
up to a scandalous 60 percent to 65 percent of contracts, the
customary cut when publishers were still selling their goods to
legislators, who in the past used pork-barrel funds for the
purchases.
But the amounts remain hefty: from 15 percent to
30 percent for textbooks and from 40 percent to 55 percent for
supplementary materials, publishers and agents say. (Supplementary
materials include books, reference materials, charts, maps, videos
and other things that are supposed to enrich a child’s learning.)
One textbook agent says the superintendent’s
“SOP” is 10 percent to 15 percent of the contract, while the
supply officer, accountant, administrative officer and auditor get 5
percent each. “The rest,” she says, “is liberally distributed
to all the others.”
These can only dampen the enthusiasm of even the
most reform-minded official at the DepEd, which has been garnering
accolades for the success of its revamped textbook procurement
program. No other government agency has undergone such a massive
overhaul of its procurement processes, which now include NGO
monitoring of purchases.
This school year, the country’s 40,000 public
elementary and high schools can again expect to benefit from the new
textbooks that have been purchased through the World Bank-funded
Social Expenditures Management Program (SEMP) and Third Elementary
Education Project (TEEP), and the ADB-supported Secondary Education
Development and Improvement Project (Sedip).
Changes in the procurement system have also
pushed textbook prices down by 40 percent: from P60 to P80 to the
current P25 to P36.
Through the first phase of SEMP alone, the DepEd
bought a whopping 42 million elementary and high school books worth
P1.6 billion, which are also printed on better-quality paper. An
impressed World Bank has released another $43 million to the DepEd,
this time to buy 50 million textbooks. The bidding for more than
half of those books is over, and deliveries will start later this
month.
Publishers who have both won and lost in the
international competitive biddings conducted by the DepEd central
office concede that rules are so rigorous–DepEd, for one, is
required to submit winning bids to the World Bank for its review and
await a “no objection letter” from the bank before awarding the
contracts–that there is practically no chance to corrupt the
process.
“Bantay na bantay [It’s very
well-guarded],” a representative of a Makati-based publishing
house says of the DepEd’s centralized procurement, which came
under intense scrutiny after the 1999 P3-million bribery attempt by
textbook agent Mary Ann Maslog at the Department of Budget and
Management.
But the DepEd is hard-pressed monitoring what
its field offices are buying. Since 2000, schools divisions and
autonomous high schools have acquired even greater discretion over
the money the national government releases for their maintenance,
operating and other expenses (MOOE). Local governments also buy
textbooks using either the Special Education Fund (SEF) or General
Fund, both of which are beyond the control of the DepEd.
Now that the maintenance and operating funds are
no longer coursed through DepEd regional offices, the power of
regional directors over textbook purchases has been clipped.
Instead, discretion over purchases for districts and elementary
schools now lies chiefly with division superintendents.
In fact, most division offices spend the MOOE of
elementary schools and deliver the goods and services directly to
the schools. “Divisions don’t have to get the go-signal from the
regional and central offices to buy books, as long as they keep
within their signing authority,” a Quezon City-based publisher
says. “They just check if they have savings from their MOOE, and
there usually are at the end of the month.”
In 2000, two orders from the education
department on the purchase of textbooks and supplementary
materials–DECS Order No. 35 and No. 78–further empowered
superintendents. The orders contain the lists of approved textbooks,
teacher’s manuals and supplementary and reference materials from
which DepEd field offices, including division offices, could buy
using savings from their maintenance funds and the special education
or local school board funds.
The orders specifically restrict field purchases
to titles that appear in the two lists and from DepEd-accredited
suppliers. Field offices are to buy according to specific requests
from principals, observe the price ceilings, which include delivery
costs, and give priority to purchase of basic texts. They were also
told to negotiate for discounts from suppliers for large-volume
purchases.
The orders allow field offices to choose the
titles themselves, thus setting aside the need for public biddings.
But a freelance textbook agent says this also means that nearly all
the books are bought from exclusive distributors, making it easier
to justify why one supplier is favored over another. The governor or
mayor and the division superintendent or district supervisor are
co-chairmen of the local school board.
The sums available in schools divisions and in
local government funds for textbooks and other instructional
materials are nowhere in the league of the billion-peso purchases
the central office makes every year. But they are pretty
substantial.
Since 2001, the SEF, raised from proceeds of the
additional one-percent real property tax to support the local school
boards, stood at P8.5 billion. One-third of this went to the
operating funds of public schools, including the purchase of
instructional materials. Local governments also dip into their
General Fund to assist public schools.
Textbook agents and publishers say many schools
divisions save as much as P1 million to P5 million every quarter
from their operating funds. They then use these savings for
textbooks and supplementary materials. Records show that the Quezon
City schools division used more than P7 million of its savings for
this purpose between May and December 2002.
If spent wisely and in coordination with the
DepEd central office, the money at the disposal of the schools
divisions and local governments could have helped the government
achieve the 1:1 textbook-to-pupil ratio not only in the core
subjects, but in other subjects as well, where shortages have at
times resulted in 27 children sharing one textbook.
But the payoffs and other perks that publishers
dangle, or division or local officials demand, have emboldened
school officials to disregard DepEd orders on textbook purchases and
worsen the textbook situation.
The textbook agent, for instance, says many
publishers almost always shoulder the expenses of division officials
when they travel to Manila and even sponsor trips abroad. A
teacher-leader who visited a division office in a northern Metro
Manila city also recalls how a publisher was openly badgering the
superintendent and other officials to decide which country they
wanted to visit in summer so she could buy their tickets.
“The superintendent was rather embarrassed
because I have known him for years,” says the teacher. “He took
me aside and explained sheepishly what the trip was for.”
Because of the freebies that various publishers
offer, some division superintendents have found it convenient to
split their textbook fund among several suppliers. “The more
suppliers, the more perks,” says the agent.
The Quezon City-based publisher, who currently
supplies 10 schools divisions nationwide, says payoffs for contracts
with schools divisions are normally given when payment is collected.
“Isang bagsak lang [It’s a one-time
thing],” he says, explaining that he or his representative would
hand the money to the superintendent, usually in the division
office. It is understood that the superintendent would take care of
the “distribution” down the line. In the past, some suppliers
had to go from unit to unit in a field office giving out brown
envelopes of grease money.
The publisher says supplementary materials
actually form the bulk of his contracts, even in areas that still
suffer a shortage of basic textbooks. The arrangement suits him and
the superintendent fine.
While he has to fork over a bigger
“SOP”–as much as 45 percent in direct sales and 55 percent in
sales brokered by freelance agents–his costs are lower than
selling a basic textbook. He points out that supplementary materials
are priced about 30 percent to 40 percent more than textbooks and
need not be printed on paper weighing 54 grams, which is now
required of textbooks. Some supplementary materials also include
textbooks that had been rejected by the DepEd for use in public
schools.
Publishers say that local governments demand 10
percent to 20 percent just for the local chief executive. The
textbook agent notes that since there are more people to deal with
SEF-supported purchases–the local government and the schools
division–the SOP tends to fall on the high side.
As a result, the COA has documented numerous
examples of irrational and irregular purchases of textbooks and
supplementary materials. In 2001 the DepEd posted the biggest audit
suspensions, totaling P6.9 billion or a quarter of all audit
suspensions. These transactions, involving 694 DepEd units, were
suspended for various reasons, including purchases of textbooks from
selected or favored publishers.
Local governments are notorious for violating
textbook-procurement guidelines. COA says that in Makati, the only
city in the country with a 1:1 textbook-to-pupil ratio in all
subjects, the mayor and schools superintendent disregarded DepEd
directives to negotiate for discounts on P223 million worth of books
bought in 2000 and 2001.
That meant lost savings of some P18.3 million.
Griped the commission: “By the magnitude of the transactions and
volume of the amount involved, it is incredible that seasoned
managers would pass up on an industry practice availed of even by .
. . mere students.”
COA said that the same suppliers that Makati
dealt with gave 20- to 30-percent discounts to the Romblon schools
division and a public high school in Abra, which bought fewer books
than Makati.
Marikina, too, did not ask for a discount when
it bought P6.8 million worth of textbooks in the same years. One of
the textbook suppliers happened to be Marikina’s own DepEd
district supervisor: Carmelita Palabay of J.C. Palabay Enterprises.
It was ironic, said COA, that Palabay gave the neighboring Pasig
schools division a 2-percent discount for an order far smaller than
Marikina’s.
Valenzuela bought in 2000 and 2001 millions of
pesos in books from three non-accredited DepEd suppliers–IFS
Trading, Caryl Merchandise and Gloria Pili, all represented by same
person–who had submitted falsified documents, including fake
authorization letters from legitimate publishers, to the local
government. Some of the books were overpriced by 100 percent, said
COA.
Caloocan and Quezon City were singled out by COA
for their habit of buying supplementary materials even when they
lacked basic textbooks in a number of subjects. The two cities were
fond as well of buying books that exceeded the quantity in their
annual procurement program or were different from those indicated in
the plan.
Caloocan’s annual procurement program for
2000, for example, provided for the purchase of five textbook titles
worth about P1 million. When the year closed, it had bought 18
titles worth P7.3 million. Only two of these titles were listed in
the procurement plan. Even then, these were bought at an excess of
7,500 copies each. All the other titles were supplementary
materials.
Top DepEd officials say that so long as textbook
buying in the field remains like this, there cannot be any
decentralization of the bulk procurement now being done at the
central office. Says Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz: “If you
decentralize it at this point, you’ll only decentralize
incompetence and corruption.”
Conclusion
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