Leyte Landslide

CATMON, ST. BERNARD, Southern Leyte—Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC) chair Sen. Richard Gordon has ordered the filing of a case against the contractor who abandoned the P35 million housing project here.

“I want the contractor charged and if he’s gone abroad we’ll extradite him. I’m a lawyer, I know what I’m saying,” Gordon told Southern Leyte Red Cross administrator Romeo Orilla, who informed the senator that the contractor may have left the country.

Paid contractor

Orilla said the LB Builders, reported based in Tacloban, had collected 15 percent of the contract amount as mobilization fund.

But the contractor only accomplished 12 percent of about 190 houses to be built for evacuees from Hinabian, Magatas, and Kauswagan villages, he said.

Orilla said the contractor abandoned the project when it failed to pay its suppliers after Red Cross rejected the contractor’s efforts to collect payment for 50 percent of the project.

“How could we pay 50 percent when they could only finish 12 percent,” Orilla said. The project was stopped last November.

Gordon issued the directive to the Red Cross staff when he saw the abandoned site during an ocular inspection with PNRC secretary general Alma Corazon de Leon, Southern Leyte Gov. Rosette Lerias and some Red Cross staffers.

Gordon also instructed his staff to speed up the re-bidding process and exert all efforts to finish the project, which was funded by the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC).

Low cost

Earlier, Gordon denied that the bidding for the Catmon project may have been rigged.

“To say that it was rigged was unfair; I had to be frank with you. We value integrity here,” Gordon said.

He said Manila-based contractors rejected the project because it was low-cost housing.

In 2003, a Red Cross staffer figured in an anomalous transaction for a housing project on Panaon Island, which enabled a supplier to collect payments without delivering materials. The project began after a landslide killed more than 150 people on Panaon.

The controversy resulted in the termination of Red Cross officials in the province as well as in Metro Manila.

Gordon also disclosed that the PNRC received about P200 million in donations for Guinsaugon victims.

More than a thousand people died when a landslide buried Guinsaugon village more than a year ago. Gordon said while there were only about 200 families who survived the tragedy of Guinsaugon, the Red Cross saw it fit to build houses for residents of neighboring barangays who also had to be moved out of harm’s way.