Mar blamed on expiring MRT maintenance deal
MANILA — Former Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas allegedly did not respond to a recommendation to prepare for the bidding of the maintenance contract of the Metro Rail Transit-3 before the original contract expired, a former general manager of the train system told a Senate panel.
Senator Grace Poe, the chairperson of the Senate public services committee looking into the issues hounding the train line, said that Al Vitangcol, a former general manager of MRT-3, told the panel that he sent Roxas a letter informing him of the need to prepare to bid
out the system’s maintenance contract as the agreement with Sumitomo was already about to end.
Poe, who together with Roxas lost the presidential race to Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte last year, said that she was flustered at why Roxas apparently ignored the supposed recommendation. Roxas has yet to air his side on the issue.
“Isa pa yang natuklasan natin ngayon—na nagpadala si Al Vitangcol ng liham kay Secretary Roxas na sabi ay dapat ayusin na natin ang bidding para dito sa maintenance provider kasi matatapos na yung kontrata ng Sumitomo o tapos na, at hindi ito inaksyunan. Hindi man lamang sumagot na oo o hindi at kung oo man o hindi, bakit?” Poe told reporters.
Vitangcol, together with Wilson De Vera, a director of the former MRT maintenance provider PH Trams, is accused of trying to extort some $30 million from Inekon Group in exchange for awarding the contract the supply the train coaches of the train line as part of the P3.8 -billion expansion project during the administration of former president Benigno Aquino III.
The alleged extortion attempt happened on July 9 and 10, 2012 and was reported by Czech Ambassador to the Philippines Josef Rychtar. Vitangcol and De Vera both denied the allegations. The incident supposedly happened in the house of Rychtar.
Poe said that the investigation had so far uncovered that PH Trams allegedly used its connections to the erstwhile ruling Liberal Party to bag the billion-peso MRT maintenance contract.
During the hearing, Roehl Bacar, president of CB&T, said that they were approached by PH Trams to bid for the contract. PH Trams and CB&T bagged the maintenance agreement for six months following the expiration of the Sumitomo contract in October 2012.
Bacar said that they were confident that they would win the agreement because the “personalities” of PH Trams bragged about their connections to the Liberal Party.
Poe said that the negotiations started when Roxas was still Transportation secretary and were completed under former Tranportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya, who admitted in a previous hearing that he signed the contract in 2012 without fully knowing its details.