CITY OF TABUK, Kalinga, May 6 (PIA) - - The province’s Bids and Awards Committee, Local Finance Committee and the Provincial Project Monitoring Committee (PPMC) have come up with policy recommendations to ensure efficient project implementation and to correct some irregularities.
Primary in the recommendations as agreed during a joint forum of the three committees with contractors and engineers is for the parties involved including contractors to do their assigned jobs and discharge judiciously their responsibilities especially in the implementation guidelines and standards.
The stakeholders forum was prompted by findings on 129 projects of the provincial government with total cost of Php45.4 million implemented from 2017 to 2020, which according to Provincial Planning and Development Coordinator Flor Moldero were served with Audit Observation Memorandum (AOMs) and 79 projects requested for validation by the Commission on Audit (COA).
As reported by the PPMC, guidelines stipulated in respective project contracts were allegedly violated causing delays in project implementation or irregularities such as questionable quality of projects. discovery of “ghost” projects, and that some projects are constructed in private lots, among others.
As most projects were found out as completed beyond the contracted number of days, the group agreed that contractors should apply for suspension immediately in case of valid reasons for the delay and that the contractor, not the Sub-contractor, should take full responsibility on the inadequacy of equipment and manpower. They recommend for the termination of projects that exceeded negative slippage of 15 percent .
On the issue of many contracts are awarded to one contractor, and passes on to sub-contractors, Contractors are reminded to closely monitor implementation of their projects. On the part of the BAC, require Constructors Performance Evaluation System result as one of the requirements for bidders, and the BAC Technical Working Group to implement strictly post evaluation of contractors,
The body also reiterated to the Provincial Engineering Office (PEO) to do its mandate of closely supervising the implementation of projects from pre-implementation stage to construction phase to completion. The PEO is tasked to assign a Project Engineer per municipal cluster and validate projects together with the contractor.
On some projects requested for inspection but no accomplishment yet, the group agreed that there must be a sanction for people involved to include the contractor. The project engineer is tasked to determine actual accomplishments before inspection to avoid collusion.
Payment of projects should be based on actual percentage of accomplishment and do a punch list on those that are less than 100% accomplishment. Projects with alteration should not be paid. Per COA ruling, variation should not exceed 10%, and allowed only in extreme need. Contractors must request change order from Project Engineer before implementation.
To discourage piecemeal allocation of projects, the group considered a ceiling of Php500,000.00 to P1 million as minimum project cost for 2022.
Moreover, only municipal priorities duly endorsed by the Municipal Development Council will be the basis for projects to be included in the Annual Investment Plan of the province and no more individual listing per official.
The group also recommended the entitlement of recognition and commendation for contractors who complete their projects earlier than the programed target of completion. (JDP/PAB-PIA CAR, Kalinga) 
Source: Philippines Information Agency (pia.gov.ph)
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