Abandoned Iloilo City Housing Project: Lost battle vs. corruption?

By FLORENCE F. HIBIONADA / PNS
August 10, 2012

ILOILO CITY  –  Nine years in the Office of the Ombudsman. 10 years in the Commission on Audit (COA). P87.3M in wasted taxpayers’ money. Three different city mayors and three City Councils. A visible sorry sight along a main highway to and from the Iloilo Airport. A daily reminder of what an unfinished and abandoned government project is.

What has since happened to Iloilo City Government’s housing project? Where are the key figures involved? Has anybody been made to pay for the validated reports of massive irregularities that led to the project’s demise? Will justice ever be served to the Ilonggo taxpaying public? Will justice be served to numerous COA reports calling to salvage whatever is left of the project? Is there justice to years pored in by Ombudsman investigators who found probable cause to indict top Iloilo City officials?

COA, the Philippines’ supreme audit institution has since dubbed the project “an investment failure.” Conceptualized in November of 1999, vigorously pursued in 2000, implemented in 2001 and abandoned in 2002, total government money spent was P87,364,819.21. The amount, COA validated, was used as payment for the project’s contract cost of P62,599.557.69 and loan interests of P24,765,261.52.

Incidentally, the botched housing project was initially funded out of the city’s bond flotation scheme as pushed by a group of financial advisors hired by the Iloilo City Government. That was the time and administration of former Mayor Mansueto Malabor with housing project cost pegged at P125,304,356.65.

When his successor, former Mayor now Lone District Congressman Jerry Treñas took over, project cost was revised to P137,787,499.56. The bond flotation was also scrapped and funds sourced through a 5-year loan with the Philippine Veterans Bank (PVB).

Original loan with PVB was P130 Million yet by end of December 2002, only P80,399,000.00 was actually released to the City Government, fully paid in 2007 with interests of a little over P24.7 Million.

Of the said P80.3 Million, P50.3 Million was directly paid to Philippine National Bank (PNB) Trust Banking Group to partially redeem the bonds issued by the City.

Yet what really happened at the start, during and after the project? Documents secured through the years reconstructed an ugly picture of local government and governance at its worst. In fact, the Office of the Ombudsman in resolving the cases as filed had this to say: “The amount involved in the ICHP which is a whooping...(P125,000,000) surely could not escape the attention of a well-meaning citizen, whether or not he or she is a beneficiary thereof,” excerpts of the 110-page Consolidated Resolution stated. “Today, as the records of the case will show, the project site is a virtual ghost town. And there is no semblance of interest among the officials concerned of Iloilo City to salvage what is left of the project nor is there any effort to compel the contractor to perform its part in the contract.”

Background

The project was called “Iloilo City Employees Housing Project” (ICEHP) that would have been home to 413 City Hall worker-recipients. Total land area for development was 56,669 square meters with the area for socialized housing covering 9,890 square meters.

The city lots are covered by Lot No. 293-A and Lot No. 293-B-TCT No. T-36832 at Barangay Ungca I in Pavia, Iloilo.

Signs of trouble happened at the earliest months of the project’s conception as it surrounded the City’s hiring of financial advisors, the bright minds of Preferred Ventures Corporation (PVC). Irregularities too in the earliest housing project activities of the Pre-Bids and Awards Committee (PBAC).