After Rappler’s laptop exposé earlier this week, news about the departure of Department of Education (DepEd) officials linked to the messy deal started to leak. Two sources confirmed the information.

Rappler started very preliminary investigations in November 2022 and first reached out to the department in December of the same year but got snail-paced, if not reluctant responses. We finally got to publish part 1 of the story on May 1, and part 2 the day after. We got wind of possible resignations on the day the first story was published and got a second confirmation on Wednesday, May 3.

The department would not confirm the information and neither would the officials concerned. But two reliable sources told Rappler that Education Undersecretary for Administration Kris Ablan has resigned from his post, along with Assistant Secretary Christopher Lawrence Arnuco.

In his vacated position, Ablan was in charge of the following:

• Administrative Service
• Planning Service
• Information and Communications Technology Service
• Teachers Camp

Ablan assumed the position under the new administration of Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte. He was also the addressee of the letter of Transpac Cargo Logistics Inc. (Transpac), the logistics firm contracted by DepEd that was hobbled by unpaid fees. Transpac demanded that the agency settle P34.5 million in unpaid fees. This unpaid amount led to the ballooning of financial and operational expenses that adversely affected operations.

Rappler reached out to Ablan Wednesday, May 3, to confirm news about his supposed resignation, but he has yet to respond as of this posting.

His recent posts on Facebook, as well as updated information about him are quite telling, however. It says he is “Former Undersecretary of the Department of Education,” serving from August 1, 2022 to April 30, 2023.

Arnuco, for his part, was also in charge of administration services. Like Ablan, he has yet to respond to questions about his alleged resignation.

A source involved in DepEd’s procurement process and familiar with Transpac operations said that the reason why laptops ended up being sold in the market was due to “inability and seeming lack of interest and know-how on the part of the contract management division and accounting division [of DepEd] to implement the contracts, particularly on the matter of payment and operations. This is compounded by the lack of guidance from the Usec [undersecretary] and/or Asec [assistant secretary] in charge. No expertise or familiarity seems to be present in the units currently assigned to work on the logistics system.”

The source was referring to Ablan and Arnuco.

The first part of Rappler’s investigative series on the messy DepEd laptop deal with Transpac showed that it was negligence and apparent corruption at the DepEd under then-president Rodrigo Duterte that caused the laptops intended for public school teachers to end up being sold in retail stores. Part 2 exposed how the choice of Transpac as the winning bidder of a huge DepEd contract was detrimental to public interest.

Read Rappler’s two-part series below.

– Rappler.com