Roxas orders COA audit on undelivered DepEd noodles

MANILA, Philippines - Senator Manuel Roxas II on Thursday requested the Commission on Audit to check on all undelivered instant noodles for the government’s Food-for-School program. In the letter to COA Chairman Reynaldo Villar, Roxas asked the agency and all its regional and provincial offices to conduct an audit of all the instant noodles that are still in Department of Education (DepEd) offices. “I would like to request COA and all its regional offices to furnish us with a comprehensive audit report on all the noodles that are in the stock/inventory of DepEd, wherever stored, covering the period of January 2008 up to the present date," the letter stated. Roxas said the Senate committee on education, which he chairs, has received reports that expired noodles from the 2007-2008 school-feeding program have not been delivered by several regional and provincial DepEd offices. With this, Roxas warned DepEd regional and provincial officials against destroying undelivered, overpriced instant noodles before the COA could complete its inventory. He said the destruction of the undelivered noodle packages would be the same as destroying evidence as the Senate education committee continues its investigation into allegation of irregularities in the DepEd’s Food-for-School Program. The Senate panel on Wednesday opened its inquiry into the alleged scam in noodles procurement, taking off from allegations that DepEd officials have been manipulating their bidding requirements for the supplier, favoring a private contractor. Businessman Prudencio Quido Jr. said the contracts awarded by DepEd to Jeverps Manufacturing Corporation since 2007 were “highly anomalous, fraudulent and worse, most disadvantageous to the interest of the government and supposed beneficiaries — the public school elementary children." He said DepEd awarded to Jeverps a P284.13-million contract for “fortified noodles with fresh eggs" in 2007 and P427.21 million for “fortified noodles with fresh eggs and malunggay" in 2009. In the hearing last Wednesday, DepEd officials denied favoring Jeverps, saying they awarded the contract to the company because it was the only one that participated in the bidding. The noodles supplied by Jeverps were imported from Vietnam. But Quido said this was because no local manufacturer could comply with the DepEd requirement that a pack of noodles should contain 100 grams, and that what was regularly supplied to the markets has 55 grams only. Also, he said that the price per noodle pack for the first project undertaken in 2007 was highly unconscionable at P18 when the price in the market was only P4.50. Moreover, he said the labeling of the noodle packs “Fortified Instant Noodles with Fresh Eggs" was deceitful as the content was not enriched with fresh eggs. He said Vietnam’s food-testing agency had revealed that “the DepEd’s fortified instant noodle with fresh egg is made of flour and does not contain any fresh egg but mere egg powder." - Amita O. Legaspi, GMANews.TV