Bello cancels POLO contract

LABOR Secretary Silvestre Bello 3rd has canceled the alleged anomalous contract entered into by the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO)-Hong Kong with an online service provider, saying it was a “midnight deal.”

Bello also ordered the filing of charges against former Hong Kong Labor Attaché Jalilo de la Torre and all those involved in the deal for grave disregard of the Procurement Law.

The decision came following the results of the investigation of a three-man fact-finding team that went to Hong Kong in reaction to an earlier story by TheManilaTimes.

The team, headed by Undersecretary Claro Arellano, looked at the reported irregularities in the procurement of the database system by the POLO office from Polaris Tools Ltd., which did not undergo public bidding.

In his report to the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) chief, Arellano said “there were no official documents that would show the conduct of a bidding to replace the expired contract of Employeasy Limited with the supposed new service provider Polaris Tools Limited, indicating ‘manifest haste and lack of transparency attendant to the said bidding.”

The alleged anomaly was exposed by the Lilac Center for Public Interest (Lilac).

Lilac President Nicon Fameronag, also a former DoLE undersecretary, on Thursday commended Bello for the swift investigation.

“I am elated over the findings which vindicates our stand to have these kind of transactions compliant with law,” he said, adding that the canceled contract contains onerous provisions that could endanger the data security of about 250,000 overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong.

The contract, he pointed out, authorizes Polaris to have “sufficient access” to POLO data and conduct data analytics to identify forced labor, bonded labor, abuse, human trafficking and any other unethical or illegal activities of almost all migrant labor stakeholders. He said such system capability was not contained in the terms of reference of the POLO’s request for proposal.