A resolution urging the Senate Blue Ribbon committee to conduct a probe into the P3.19 billion Road IT Infrastructure project has yet to be tackled seven months after it was filed before the body.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III requested the Blue Ribbon Committee to immediately act on his filed resolution seeking for an investigation on the alleged “undue payment” given by the Land Transportation Office to a joint venture in connection with the multi-billion project.

“It’s about time that the Blue Ribbon Committee conducts this much needed investigation into the details of this LTO contract,” he said.

Filed August last year, Senate Resolution 147 seeks an investigation on the LTO’s undue payment to the joint venture of Dermalog Identification System, Holy Family Printing Corp., and Microgenesis and Verzontal Builders, citing certain provisions of the law that “issuances are explicit in providing that as a general rule, no payment shall be made for services not yet rendered or for supplies and materials not yet delivered under any contract with the government.”

The lawmaker said Clause 10 of the General Conditions of the Contract of the standard Philippine Bidding Documents for Goods state that “Payments shall be made only upon a certification by the Head of the Procuring Entity to the effect that the Goods have been rendered or delivered in accordance with the terms of this Contract and have been duly inspected and accepted.”

“Ten percent of the amount of each payment shall be retained by the Procuring Entity to cover the Supplier’s warrant obligations under this Contract as described in GCC Clause 17,” he said.

The LTO, in the 2021 Consolidated Annual Audit Report for the Department of Transportation, of the Commission on Audit, was flagged “for the undue payment given to the foreign information technology contractor, Dermalog, despite incomplete turnover for the P3.19 billion Road IT Infrastructure project.”