A house inquiry in 2016 uncovered irregularities in the printing of passports but lawmakers did nothing after they were invited to a “field trip” sponsored by the subject of the probe, a former representative said Thursday.
The 2016 investigation, triggered by complaints on the delays in passport issuances, discovered that government printer APO Production Unit Inc. tapped a private contractor in violation of its contract, former Kabayan Party-list Rep. Harry Roque said.
READ: NPC probes passport snafu; DFA flip-flops
Meanwhile, after backtracking on his expose that a former Department of Foreign Affairs contractor had run off with the personal data of Filipinos in their passports, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV on Thursday told Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Locin to focus on his job and not on Twitter.
Speaking at the regular breakfast forum at the Senate, Trillanes said his unsolicited advice to Locsin was to focus on his work being the top diplomat of the country.
He said Locsin should stop his social media [activities] because he was not campaigning and he was not a politician.
Roque said APO lacked printing machinery and entered an equipment lease agreement with the private firm United Graphic Expression Corp. or UGEC.
UGEC, however, provided not just the machinery but also capital, employees, and security for the Batangas printing facility, Roque said.
“The real printer of our passport was UGEC. It was disguised as an equipment lease agreement, but in truth, it was subcontracted by APO,” Roque told dzMM radio.
“Under RA 9184, we should not pay for service or anything that did not undergo public bidding.”
Roque said the hearing also summoned state auditors and found that UGEC was bankrupt when it entered the deal.
“At that time I said, why wouldn’t passport orders be delayed when its maker is bankrupt?”
Passports should cost only P700, but applicants paid around P900 for it, Roque said.
He said nothing came out of the investigation after UGEC invited lawmakers to tour printing facilities in Europe.
“After their field trip in Europe, the issue was gone.”
Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. earlier this week also said the passport set-up still existed because “some powerful members of Congress intervened… and said there was nothing wrong with the contract.”
Those lawmakers, he said, were members of the Commission on Appointments.
The CA in 2017 rejected Yasay’s ad interim appointment to the Cabinet after he allegedly lied about his US citizenship and passport.
The printing of passports made headlines again recently after Locsin claimed that a former private contractor “took all” passport data, making it inaccessible to APO.
The government, he said, had to rebuild its database for all passports issued before 2010.
However, Yasay said the former contractor, the French firm Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciare, could not have taken passport information because it only built a personalization system and did not have a copy of the data.
Oberthur’s system had a different format from that of UGEC, but the government and its new contractor were too “embarrassed” to seek help from the French firm in resolving the issue, he said.