EDUCATION Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio said that the Department of Education is conducting its own investigation on the “overpriced laptops” purchased by the Department of Budget and Management for teachers.

“We wrote [to] COA (Commission on Audit) requesting for a fraud audit and COA already responded to us with regard to their conduct of a fraud audit inside the department, particularly for the laptop project,” she said during the agency’s budget briefing.

Duterte-Carpio said that she wanted to know if there were DepEd personnel involved in the procurement of the laptops.

“I already ordered the chief of staff to open an inquiry whether some of the personnel in the DepEd were acting in ultra vires with regard to the decision-making of modifying the procurement that was done for the laptops,” the official said.

In August, the Senate conducted an investigation on the procurement of the pricy entry-level laptops for teachers. Each laptop cost P58,300 but was only supposed to be P35,000 per unit.