Cusi seeks probe on e-trike project anomaly

Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi has ordered the creation of a multi-agency investigation team to dig into alleged “inconsistencies” in the electric tricycles (e-trike) project that had been aligned to be bankrolled by a loan from the Asian Development Bank.

The probe body, he said, will comprise of representatives from other key agencies, such as the Department of Finance (DOF) and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), aside from the DOE contingent.

“There had been assumptions for the rollout of 100,000 e-trike units. And the LGUs (local government units) supposedly supported procurement of the units with guarantee from their IRAs (internal revenue allotments). But when the e-trike units were finally made available, they were telling us that they never agreed to that kind of condition,” Cusi noted.

That is the premise then that the department has been slanting on for its call of an extensive probe as to why the e-trike project came to being and why aberrations happened in the process.

Energy Assistant Secretary Leonido J. Pulido III expounded that the energy chief sought for the creation of a committee “that will investigate the whole process of how the e-trike project originated – and who decided on it?”

Part of the required review shall be to ascertain “why problems were encountered in the project – and hopefully, we can learn from it, so it will not happen again.”

Pulido added “the secretary has written letters to relevant government agencies – and they already sent representatives. So we have been going through the guidelines as part of the study that we will be undertaking.”

Given the predicaments on the etrikes’ rollout, chiefly the reluctance of the targeted LGU-beneficiaries on procurement, Cusi noted that they were prompted to change the deployment system of the fleets.

That instead of securing IRA guarantees from the LGUs, it will now be the DOE that shall be paying for the loan portion on the 3,000 e-trikes that the government had elected to honor in the loan covenant with ADB.

The 3,000 units amounted to R1.73 billion; while the cancelled portion of the ADB credit facility hovered at R21.67, according to the energy department.

The DOE just recently devised its modified rollout scheme of the e-trikes – prioritizing deployment in areas which it categorized as under the “build-back paradigm,” and that included war-torn Marawi and the domains recently pummeled by natural calamities.

The first 200 e-trike units had been given to Marawi; while the next endowments are targeted to be with the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), primarily for their camp use.