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House uncovers $81.6-M LRTA train coach anomaly

By Gerry Baldo

02/12/2009

Members of the House committee on oversight yesterday lambasted officials of the Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA) for spending $81.6 million buying trains that were unnecessary.

Samar Rep. Paul Daza said he cannot understand why the LRTA bought 48 trains without additional tracks to run on.

The purchases were made without an authorized allocation from the Department of Budget and Management and without the signature of Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza, also LRTA chairman, Melchor Plaza, deputy secretary general of party-list group I-Angat Ka Pilipino said.

On top of these, the trains were purchased without any railway structure or any related facilities, Plaza said.

Plaza said the LRTA acquired 48 trains at $1.7 million for each train or a total of $81.6 million even as the proponent Lavalin of Canada for the Cavite LRT extension had pulled out from the project.

“What I don’t understand is why we have to buy a train without any railway? Normally, you build a track and put a train on it later,” Daza, former spokesman of the Metro Rail Transit Corp. which runs the North Avenue to Baclaran route via Edsa trains.

LRTA corporate secretary Hernando Cabrera said the purchase was intended to increase the capacity to transport passenger along the LRT 1 route, which runs along Taft Avenue from Baclaran to Monumento along Rizal Avenue.

“We had to increase the capacity from the usual 48,000 passengers a day. Now, we can accommodate 500,000 passengers. That is one of the pre-requisites in order to have an extension,” Cabrera told members of the panel.

Cabrera said that the LRTA operating the Baclaran-Monumento route now has 148 trains.

Daza, however, debunked the claim even as he noted that the MRT in Edsa has only 73 trains which carries more passengers than that of the LRT-1.

He said that all the 73 trains are not even utilized everyday.

Cabrera later during the hearing claimed that the newly acquired trains could be used in the LRT-1 extension that would run from Baclaran to Cavite.