P1.32B Textbook Contracts of DepEd, Questioned

If things go as planned, the Department of Education will start providing this month Sixty one.4 million duplicates of textbooks as well as teachers’ manuals worth P2.58 billion to open public elementary and high colleges nationwide.

The deliveries consist of some 40 titles, both aged and new, these expected to be written by summer. When college year 2012-13 rolls around, every public school child will have his or her own textbook in all the core subjects except in senior high school Filipino where absolutely no books were purchased by the DepEd.

But civil society watchdogs as well as a number of former and present education officials say about half the books, or just over $ 30 million copies valued at P1.317 million, were procured through direct contracting, a mode they said breaks Republic Act No. 9184 or the Government Procurement Change Act. The law sets competitive or open public bidding as the guideline for all state procurements and allows direct getting only in “highly outstanding cases.”

The dealings involve seven marketers of 18 old titles that have been in use in public schools for almost a decade. And it was Education Secretary Armin Luistro that decided in late April to buy the books through direct getting. That early, the DepEd’s own Procurement Service reminded the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) of the breach through a memo.