Former Education Secretary Leonor Briones dismissed claims on Thursday that she was in hiding amid allegations that the Department of Education (DepEd) purchased overpriced and outdated laptops under her tenure through the Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM).
Briones made the statement in response to inquiries from the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, which is led by Senator Francis Tolentino.
She emphasized that because the PS-DBM specializes in “big-time” procurements, the DepEd requested that it purchase the computers on their behalf.
“ADB and Philippine Institute of Development Studies [have] been tracking the record of PS-DBM and this is why we say that we endorsed the project to them,” she explained.
Although the DepEd has six Bids and Awards Committees (BAC), the former Education secretary said a sizable BAC was required to handle the P2.4 billion worth of procurement.
“We calculated that we are already preparing for face-to-face, we may not have the time to really look into the details of the offers of the various suppliers,” she added.
Briones argued that the actions taken by the DepEd when she was in charge were legitimate and had been carried out by other government agencies for many years.
She told the lawmakers, “Yes, we have a BAC. But we don’t have a big enough BAC to specialize in a six-month plan to provide computers at a time of a lockdown, at a time when chips were not produced, at a time of Covid-19 and the supply was very limited.”
Meanwhile, according to former Budget Undersecretary and former PS-DBM head Lloyd Christopher Lao, said laptop prices and demand rose during the lockdown because so many people were working from home.
The fact is, Lao pointed out, “On June 2020, we really awarded in favor of DepEd, PHP32,000 pesos laptop at (and) Intel Core i5 na po (already).” He informed senators, “When we conducted a market survey on March [2020], yan daw yung reason na tumaas.”
The Commission on Audit requested an explanation from the DepEd for spending P2.4 billion on “pricey” and “outdated” laptops for teachers in its 2021 report.
Photo Credit: Facebook/leonor.magtolisbriones
