Water calamity, really

April 28, 2016

Holland Water reminds me of Kuan Yu.
Both are unqualified and thus, should have been disqualified at the outset, to join the public biddings to perform for government.
Holland Water won the contract to supply areas under "water calamity" that the Iloilo City council declared second week of April. It wrangled the contract on the bid price of P220 per cubic meter. A “notice to proceed” was given it April 20 but it took it another week to start delivering water.
Reason: it has no water tanker to transport water.
It's "winning bid offer" of P220 per cubic meter is overpriced. MIWD charges a residential subscriber P159 per minimum consumption of 10 cubic meters monthly. That's P15.90 per cubic meter. Flo Water which has a supply contract with MIWD charges the public utility P11 per cubic meter.
Let's go to Kuan Yu. Government's PSALM awarded Kuan Yu in 2013 the hefty contract of P87 M to clean up the oil spill off northern Iloilo in the aftermath of supertyphoon Yolanda that rammed Napocor's Power Barge II spilling 833,000 liters of bunker fuel from its tank. A year and a half passed but the clean up was far from completed.
Kuan Yu just didn't have the capacity to carry out the job. It grabbed the contract through a shadowy public bidding process that disqualified the most qualified, well, on the behest of as news reports say, of a certain Franklin Drilon, prince of the Pork Barrel.
Kuan Yu is a water purifying and bottling company with capitalization of only P50,000. It has no address, the reason why Iloilo Gov. Arthur D. Defensor, Sr., was hard put to initiate a graft suit against those involved in the shenanigan.
Kuan Yu has no experience in oil cleanup. Neither has it the equipment. It has no experienced crew. It simply hired locals to do the clean up who it armed only with buckets, and completely deprived of safety protocols like gloves, boots, safety hats, masks, and overalls.
The first equipment it brought in was a water pump to collect whatever remained inside the tank of the ill-fated barge. The pump belonged to the Coast Guard, not Kuan Yu, incidentally. The floaters and booms (used to contain the bunker within the enclosure), were also owned by the Coast Guard.
The corrupt knows no bound: they welcome disasters and tragedies as opportunities for broad daylight robberies.
Bwisit nga Franklin Drilon!

Comments

  1. petMay 4, 2016 at 1:16 AM

    as of this writing, holland water has not yet begun delivery of water.

    ReplyDelete

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