CONSTRUCTION OF CEBU CITY MEDICAL CENTER ENTERS 10TH YEAR

NINE years and three mayors ago, the Cebu City government began the construction of the new Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC). It was to be a modern, 10-story medical facility catering to the residents of Cebu City in general, the lower-income residents in particular. The need for a new city-owned hospital was obvious: the old CCMC building was rendered unsafe after the Oct. 15, 2013 earthquake of 7.2 magnitude. Hospital operations were transferred to a temporary location at the building of the Bureau of Fire Protection.

Alas, as of today, only the three lower floors are operational. Not even the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic can explain or justify the fact that the hospital remains unfinished nine years after construction commenced. Worse, it is not clear how much still needs to be done, how much it will cost, how much has already been spent, and whether what is already there is structurally safe and sound.

In light of these and more questions, the Cebu City Council has requested Acting Mayor Raymond Garcia to put on hold the bidding of a contract worth P700 million for the "completion" of the CCMC. The P700 million was reported as "savings" but is actually an unspent balance of a contract rescinded in November 2022. How can there be "savings" when two construction phases, with a total project cost of P1.4 billion, were aborted?

In December 2020, bidding was being done for the P500 million phase 4 of the hospital. However, six months later, opposition politician Mary Ann de los Santos revealed that the city government, then headed by Mayor Edgardo Labella, had canceled the bidding. Explaining this, then city administrator, lawyer Floro Casas Jr., who signed the May 4, 2021 cancellation notice on behalf of Mayor Labella, said that it was the bids and awards committee that decided to cancel the bidding (Sunstar Cebu, July 2, 2021). The P500 million would instead be added to the P1 billion supplemental budget that the city council approved a few weeks later. It would be one big final contract.

In April 2022, a contract was signed for phase 4, but with a total project cost of P908 million only. The P908 million came from "savings" -- P700 million from the above-mentioned P1 billion supplemental budget passed on July 28, 2021, and P217 million from the P500 million supplemental budget for CCMC passed on June 17, 2020 (the canceled Dec. 2020 bidding). The Commission on Audit, incidentally, found the P908 million project cost overstated by P62 million due to the application of the wrong VAT percentage.

Then, in November 2022, only seven months after he had signed the P908 million contract, Mayor Michael Rama rescinded it due to "negative slippage" of 11.7 percent. "Enough is enough ... Too long the waiting, too much patience being wasted," an irked Rama said. "We have to take over, not for our own sake, but for the sake of the poor awaiting for a hospital with love, care, and compassion assured" (Cebu City government website, Nov. 9, 2022). He announced that he'd had enough of bidding and would look for other ways. On April 24, 2023, the mayor assured the public that "we will finish CCMC this year." That didn't happen. A few days ago, Dr. Peter Mancao, the Chief of Hospital, disclosed that construction paid for by private donors is ongoing on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors (Sunstar Cebu, June 27, 2024).

The Cebu City council has asked all concerned persons and offices to be present in an executive session on July 24. Hopefully, they can shed light on how much has already been spent on the construction and what still needs to be done. And how the P1.5 billion earmarked for CCMC's twice canceled phase 4 is now only P700 million. As mentioned above, the Cebu City BAC in early 2021 canceled the first bidding of phase 4 in order to have one big CCMC completion project worth P1.5 billion.

The Cebu City Department of Engineering and Public Works in November 2022 disclosed that the "total running cost" of the CCMC had reached P1.909 billion. Phases 1, 1.1, 2 and 3 project costs reached P1 billion, as per official bid documents posted online. Add a little over P100 million paid to E.M. Sicat for work done from April to November 2022; that's still not P1.9 billion. Definitely, a detailed accounting of all public funds used for the construction of the CCMC since July 2015 must be done before any new contract is awarded. This could dispel any suspicion that another round of bidding has something to do with fundraising for the 2025 elections and that the CCMC construction has been a milking cow for some unscrupulous public officials.

2024-06-30T16:05:35Z dg43tfdfdgfd