MikeLigalig.com

Published by the Bohol Sunday Post

Just how many congressmen has the third district?

If the grapevine is to be believed it has two, -the incumbent Adam Relson Jala and his father Eladio.

This question cropped up after it was gathered that the two were fighting over projects in the third district involving the choice of contractors.

Driven no less by the belief that he is his own man, Cong. Jala was reported to have tangled with his own father, whom he succeeded as third district legislator, in the choice of contractors to prosecute road projects amounting all in all to P.160 million. If one is thinking of having an SOP of 10%, the recipient will get a cool P15 million out of all these projects.

It is everybody's knowledge that public works projects of congressmen are the lucrative source of kickbacks ranging from as low as 10% to as high as 20%.         

This information was leaked to the Post yesterday by an unimpeachable source in Bohol's construction industry.

The incident took place after a pre-bidding conference in Cebu where details were discussed as to who among the qualified contractors will undertake at least three road projects in Jala's district The projects are two clustered contracts at P23 million each or P46 million and the biggest at P80 million.

During the meeting, it became evident to the pre-bidding participants that father and son have their own separate protegees of contractors who would be awarded road contracts in the third district.

The most lucrative project where Jala and son were having difficulty settling the score as to who's who would finally bag the contract was the 80 million pesos road project in the S-Bullones-Jagna Road.

Earlier, two projects which were clustered to the scorn and consternation of local contractors were reportedly "cooked" to benefit the young Jala's choice of contractor. There was no sign of objection from the father side. According to local contractors, the projects were clustered although they very far from each other in order to favor the young Jala's choice of road contractor. The neophyte solon did succeed in clustering the two projects depriving local contractors from participating. Despite vehement objections of local contractors to separate the two road contracts, Jala remained unyielding citing that it was the regional DPWH calling the shots given the clustering mode.

But the P80 million road contract where other Cebu and Leyte -based contractors were salivating to undertake were the object of a tug-of-war between Jala and his congressman son.

The young Jala has for his own choice an Ormoc-based construction company while the father's favorite one is a Manila-based construction firm

The elder Jala's choice came into the picture after the contractor (Ormoc-based) was disqualified to bid in the P80 million contracts owing to its failure to file bid documents on time. Unknown to the father, his son has another favorite contractor, this time Cebu-based, that took the cudgels for the disqualified bidder.

Thus, the trouble between father and son.

According to industry sources, "if the truth of the bidding is in the cooking" will not push through, local contractors will have the last laugh because the winning bidder will do away with giving the SOP to all the "players" of the projects-- from the congressman to DPWH officials and personnel. The so-called buy-out which represented 3% of the project cost and to be divided among participating bidders will also be done away with because the bidding became a survival of the fittest-meaning nobody has the upper hand in winning the contract except that it will be decided according to the lowest bid.

Said to be the contractor of choice of retired Highways Undersecretary Juanito Abergas, Pershan Construction bagged all the six projects during the elder Jala's term to the dismay of local contractors.

When the young Jala took over the reins of his father as third district lawmaker, Pershan Construction is back in action. Although already out of the DPWH loop upon his retirement, Abergas reportedly exercised strong influence in the bidding of projects in Region VII.

The fight, however between father and son in the implementation of third district projects has its own positive impact to local contractors.

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