City Hall to re-bid P50M fixtures for NGC
BACOLOD CITY -- The city government will conduct a re-bidding of the P50 million worth of furniture and fixtures for the New Government Center after the bidding conducted last Wednesday failed.
Bids and Awards Committee chair Atty. Goldwin Nifras said the bidders-- Summit/ERGO, COMFAC Corp., and Zacto System's Philippines Inc. -- failed to pass the eligibility and technical evaluation conducted by the Technical Working Group.
He said that the incorporation papers of Zacto, which was represented by former Provincial Board Member Victor Puey was still under process and its foreign partner has 41% capitalization. Under the law, foreign capitalization would only be in the maximum of 40% and 60% for its Filipino partners.
Nifras said the three companies that failed to pass the requirements set by BAC can still participate in the re-bidding. They just need to correct their discrepancies. BAC is also amenable to change some of its requirements to make it more reasonable, Nifras said.
During the pre-bid conference, there were 14 companies that signified their intention to bid but only three were able to participate in the actual bidding.
Puey earlier said that he somewhat sensed that City Hall seems to be giving favors to the two competing bidders as they were allowed to enter the NGC premises at 11 p.m. of August 19, 2008 to set up their mock-ups or samples of the furniture and fixtures.
While Zacto only entered the NGC and was able to set up in the morning of August 20, 2008.
The BAC, TWG and some representatives of the concerned agencies of government even waited for Zacto to finish assembling their samples.
The foreign partner of Zacto was even seen sweating to hurry up fixing the samples.
Puey also said that the mock-ups of the two bidders even came in one delivery van.
He was also very sure that the two bidders did not follow the specifications.
"We follow up to the smallest millimeter. They required Formica and we submitted Formica and others did not. I feel we are being cheated here. They have allowed the two companies to enter NGC while we were not. Do they mean that anybody can just come here even without the turn over of the edifice from Hilmarcs to City Hall? I was not born yesterday. This bidding, the requirement is so difficult to comply and they will just look for a mere mistake and you will be out," Puey complained.