Angara: Over 50% of stranded laptops transported from warehouse

Education Secretary Sonny Angara on Tuesday said more than 50% of the stored ICT equipment in the warehouse of the Department of Education's (DepEd) logistics provider have already been removed for distribution to various areas.

During the Senate Committee on Finance deliberations on the proposed 2025 budget of the Department of Education (DepEd), Angara said that DepEd sought assistance from the Philippine Air Force, as well as other government agencies and private individuals to get the items out from the warehouse of Transpac Logistics.

“With respect to the IT packages, I think over 50% have been removed from the warehouse. With respect to the other items which are bigger, the furniture, I think we’re only at 10%. But those are the more challenging things,” he told the House panel.

“Sabi nga nila, ‘yung [they said that the] IT equipment has a lifespan and we might be exceeding that lifespan if we don’t act quickly on it.”

He said that even local government units reached out to DepEd to get the equipment themselves.

“Since the news came out, we’ve received many offers from local government officials to take the items off our hands so that we can be able to speed up the removal of these items from the warehouse,” Angara added.

The DepEd chief earlier revealed that some 1.5 million units of laptops, books, and other equipment have been stored for four years at the warehouse of the DepEd’s logistics provider.

Angara explained that the issue dates back during the term of former Education Secretary Leonor Briones in 2020 and 2021, when DepEd contracted the services of a logistics provider different from the supplier.

He said that he will be implementing reforms in DepEd to avoid a repeat of events.

“First of all, as a major policy, we are no longer adopting that innovation of having a separate logistics provider. I think it’s much simpler to divert to the old system where the winning bidder or supplier is the one who has to provide the delivery,” he said.

“And given that we’re going to engage in early procurement activities, they also have to take care of the warehousing and the delivery in such a way that we provide…enough time for them to deliver come the first day of school in 2025 but also to also manage their time for the deliveries,” he added.

In December 2023, then-DepEd Undersecretary Michael Poa said that the Education Department already started hauling various undistributed learning materials from warehouses of Transpac Logistics a month after the agency filed a civil case against the logistics provider.

Poa said that DepEd tapped Transpac in 2021 to provide them with logistics, warehousing, and tagging services for the learning resources from October 8, 2021 to June 30, 2022.

However, DepEd said Transpac failed to deliver the goods “completely and on time,” which prompted the agency to seek legal remedies after months of discussions with the firm.

Meanwhile, based on the Commission on Audit’s (COA) 2023 Annual Audit Report, the DepEd had "zero accomplishment" in its procurement of ICT equipment as of Dec. 31, 2023.

COA said that the agency didn't meet the program’s 2023 targets of procuring 2,349 e-learning carts, 2,648 Smart TVs, 12,022 laptops for teaching personnel and 7,588 laptops for non-teaching personnel. — RSJ, GMA Integrated News