A Palace official on Sunday recommended that the government dissolve the joint venture between the state-run APO Production Unit and a private printing company for the production of passports, arguing that both parties have acted beyond the powers conferred upon them by law.
In a document dated Jan. 23, 2017, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo said the APO-PU committed grave abuse of discretion and could be held criminally and administratively liable for engaging the services of United Graphic Expression Corp., a privately owned printing firm to implement the e-passport project of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
“APO should refrain from engaging, subcontracting or assigning the printing of passports to private entities, including UGEC,” Panelo wrote in a legal opinion executed on the e-passport controversy.
Panelo said if abrogation of the joint venture agreementwould render APO-PU incapable of performing its contractual obligations under a memorandum of agreement with the DFA, the DFA would have sufficient basis to terminate its agreement with APO-PU.
Earlier, DFA spokesman Charles Jose said there was nothing irregular with its contract with APO, the group that bagged the multi-billion-peso printing contract for electronic passports in 2015.
“As far as we’re concerned, there’s nothing irregular with our contract with APO; everything is above board,” he maintained.
He added that its contract with APO went through a thorough review by an inter-agency group under the Department of Finance.
But Panelo said the agreement forged between APO and the DFA on Oct. 5, 2015 required APO to use its own facilities, equipment and machinery in printing passports for the DFA.
Originally, the printing of passports was handled by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
The DFA reportedly vetted APO, a corporation attached to the Presidential Communications Operations Office then headed by Secretary Herminio Coloma, as an authorized supplier or service provider for the production and printing of “accountable forms and sensitive high quality/volume” documents including passports and tax stamps.
It turned out, however, that APO-PU did not have the technical capability or the state-of-the-art equipment to perform its contractual obligations to the DFA, hence, it hired the services of UGEC.
Panelo said the outsourcing scheme of APO-PU resulted in a breach of a resolution by the Government Procurement Policy Board, as well as pertinent General Appropriations Act and Republic Act 9184 prescribing the rules on public bidding.
“Such subcontracting arrangement or assignment may subject the APO and/or UGEC officials responsible for the same to criminal and administrative liabilities,” Panelo stated.
He also recommended that the passports should cost only P650 each. The DFA currently charges P950 per, plus P250 for “overtime charges” if the applicant is in a hurry and opts to use the express lane.
APO, which is operating under the PCOO, is described in the said agreement as the only recognized government printers that expressed willingness to print the e-passport.
The other two RGPs are the National Printing Office and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
“We can outsource the production of passports only to government printing offices, and there are only three such offices: BSP, which didn’t want to continue printing the passports for us; the National Printing Office, which didn’t want the job; and APO production unit,” Jose said.