An employee of the Technical Education and Skills Authority filed a P1.4-billion graft case against 11 officials of the agency after the TESDA board found evidence of a conspiracy to rig the procurement of special toolkits for TESDA scholars on behalf of their preferred contractor.
In her graft complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman, TESDA employee Armina Flora Tayko-Villanueva accused her colleagues Pilar de Leon, Imelda Ong, Luz Victoria Amponin, Maria Magdalena Butad, Renato Geron, Gaspar Gayona, Dante Navarro, Maria Clara Ignacio, Gracia dela Rama, Conrado Duque and Leonardo Pinac of allegedly violating Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices law.
Villanueva, in a press statement, said the 11 reportedly conspired to rig the bidding for the procurement of P1.4 billion worth of starter toolkits on Special Training for Employment Program or STEP.
Former members of the TESDA bids and awards committee, the 11 were accused of having caused the delay of the awarding of said contract to the winning bidder which Villanueva said was compliant with all regulatory requirements.
The 11 invalidated the win of the bidder to cause a rebidding in favor of their long-standing contractor, ACMI, who lost during the first round of the procurement bids due to lack of competency and standing, Villanueva said.
TESDA records show that most of the contracts entered into by the agency had ACMI as third party supplier.
Some of these contracts involved procurement of vehicles, production of printed materials and several others.
Villanueva tagged Pilar de Leon, chief of the TESDA administration office, as the mastermind behind what she described as the anomalous rebidding.
This is the same person, Villanueva said, that manipulated the payments of multi-million pesos to several ghost training schools in Regions 3 and 4, based on an investigation initiated by former TESDA Director General Guiling Mamondiong.
Mamondiong appointed Villanueva as head of a team which investigated De Leon and Atty. Imelda Ong. Several firms which are already closed and not operating as training skills schools continue to receive multi-million peso payments after presenting TESDA coupons.