BY MAE SINGUAY
BACOLOD City – An executive assistant of Mayor Monico Puentevella rejected the findings of the Commission on Audit (COA) that there was no overprice in the construction of the city hall during the administration of then Mayor Evelio Leonardia.
The COA ruling virtually cleared Leonardia of alleged corruption in the multimillion-peso project.
Sarah Esguerra said she will challenge the COA findings even up to the Supreme Court.
Believing that there was an overprice, Esguerra was one of the complainants in several graft cases filed against Leonardia before the Office of the Ombudsman. These, however, were dismissed.
Leonardia is now the congressman of Bacolod City. He and Puentevella are politically at odds.
What were COA’s bases for saying there was no overprice, asked Esguerra.
She believed more the previous findings of Bacolod City COA resident auditors Sheila Portal and Loida Arabelo, and supervising auditor Antonio Deramas who recommended the issuance of a Notice of Disallowance on the construction of the P364,831,456.52 new city hall.
The city hall was completed in 2008. Leonardia called it the New Government Center. But when Puentevella became the city mayor in 2013, he renamed it the People’s House.
Esguerra also asserted that city hall contractor Hilmarc’s Construction Corp. was ineligible to do the project, citing the Bids and Awards Committee’s ruling that the company allegedly failed to met the requirements.
On Aug. 28, COA’s central office lifted the Notice of Disallowance. The Special Audit Team it formed said the contractor even gave the city government a general discount of P4 million and upgraded certain works or portions of the project in the amount of P7,321,426.46 at no extra cost to the city government.
Part of the COA’s findings read: “The findings of the Special Audit Team that the project was 100 percent completed with a project cost within the allowable 10 percent variance supports the conclusion that the project did not result to injury, damage or detriment of the city government of Bacolod.”/PN
