The Issue of Corruption in MRT3

             What’s happening to the officials of the Aquino administration? Some of them are involved in the anomaly like DBM Sec. Butch Abad, PNP Director General Alan Purisima and now, DOTC Sec. Jun Abaya faces another controversy because of the corruption that he involved in MRT. Is this what they called ‘matuwid na daan’?

            On Sept. 25, the DOJ Field Investigation Office (FIO) has formally announced that as of now they are investigating the secretary and some of his allies in DOTC, including the former MRT chief Al Vitangcol. The DOJ accepted many complaints against them and this is the time that they would take an action. If FIO will find a probable cause they will file a case in the court to persecute them. We should hope that the DOJ would not be influenced by Malacanang with their decision. Because as what we have heard, instead to castigate their officials who involved in anomaly; they are only protecting them.

            By the way, why the FIO investigates the Vitangcol and Abaya corruption? They will not do this if they don’t smells something fishy about their leadership. For a short background, the government entered into a public-private partnership (PPP) when they operate MRT3. It was built by MRTC; this company is composed of different private companies. Those MRT Holdings are the owner of MRT3 and not the government. And now, the government wants to take over the MRT3 operation and maintenance. Before this DOTC made a lot of mistakes against their business partner. The department didn’t follow the rules written to their BLT agreement in 1999. It is said that only the MRTC has the right to choose any bidder to develop the train system. But what happened is the government bypassed MRTC to push their own preference.

            According to MRTC Chief Bob Sobrepena, when Somitomo, former maintenance provider of MRT3 finished their contract; they had a plan to extend the service of this company because of their excellent performance. But all of a sudden, DOTC got another maintenance provider which was Phl Trams without any public bidding and consultation to MRTC. During that time, this company was only a two month old and they had only a capital about 625,000. Why they gave such a huge contract to a newbie if there was no under the table involved? If not, it was about ‘kumpadre system’ because according to the report, one of the board members of Phl Trams is a relative of Mr. Vitangcol.

            DOTC also set aside the rights of MRTC to choose a maintenance provider when they hired the service of APT Global. This is the reason why MRT3 is facing a mechanical problem because only MRTC knows which company is compatible with their own train system. Then, when MRT3 faced an accident, Sec. Abaya pointed his finger on them. He can’t accept the reality that what happened was a fruit of their negligence or mismanagement. To comfort the  commuters, the government just announced that purchasing of the new trains is their solution to the problem. Maybe this is good, but it has no guarantee that accidents could happen it again. The old train came from Czech Republic, but the government will buy new rail coaches to China. What if the rail coaches from China doesn’t compatible to the train system here? According to some report, trains from China has low quality. The Singapore government and other countries already bought trains from them and they also encountered major problems. It is no also assured, even if the government will take over the full operstion of MRT3, it doesn’t mean that they would also fix our train system. How can they do that, if the leader in DOTC is not sufficient to his post. So, goodluck to the government and commuters!