CLARK FREEPORT – Amid the still unsolved murder of its chief engineer, the Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) board has decided to award a P205-million Instrument Landing System (ILS) project to a firm which it had earlier disqualified.
This, even as Tarlac police chief Senior Supt. Alex Sintin, head of the task group created to probe the killing of CIAC chief engineer Raul Angeles in Sta. Ignacia, Tarlac last Nov.20, said his probers already have leads on the identity of the gunman, believed tobe a hired killer.
Police sources said the murder of Angeles could be job-related. Angeles’s department was in charge of crafting the terms of reference (TOR) for bidders in Clark airport projects, including the ILS whose bidding has been noted as controversial. Scrapping its notice for rebidding on the ILS project, the CIAC board acknowledged last Fridaythe firm Evercon Builders and Equipment Corp. (Evercon) as contractor for the ILS project which it won in a bid-ding in October last year.
The CIAC later declared failure of bidding for the project and slated a rebidding supposedly last Nov. 14, amid protests from Evercon which filed a P1.2 million unrefundable protest fee. But a source from the CIAC bids and awardscommittee said that the recent breakdown of the old ILS component called Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) was a major factor that led the CIAC to award the contract to Evercon. DME relays to pilots data on his incoming aircraft’s distance from the runway.
It broke down only last October, said the source from CIAC who asked not to be named for lack of authority to talk about the issue. He said other bidders admitted they were not capable of complying with new deadlines imposed by the CIAC board for the rebidding of the ILS project. The lifespan of ILS is usually from 10 to 15 years, but Clark’s ILS is now 18 years old.
Earlier the police chief of Sta. Ignacia, Tarlac, where Angeles resided, admitted that his probers found no suspect in his town and concluded that the murder case could be job-related. Angeles’s engineering epartment has been in charge of crafting TOR’s for multi-million peso project at the airport, including the ILS which had an approved budget contract (ABC) of P225 million. The day after he was killed, three top officials of CIAC received text messages saying: “One down, more to go.”
“The CIAC board decided to take in Evercon because of the breakdown of the DME and the inability of the other bidders to comply immediately with the document requirements,” the source said. He added that theCIAC board asked that the cost be trimmed down by as much as 10 percent by excluding items such as service vehicles which are not essential to ILS operations. “The project is not overpriced contrary to reports, because what we want is world class system plus parts supply and even training of personnel,” he added.
