UPLB got preowned vehicles from Pagcor

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna, Philippines—The five multicab vehicles that the University of the Philippines campus here received from Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) were preowned and had green license plates before the university registered these as government property.

The vehicles were part of the multimillion-peso assistance that Pagcor, then chaired by Efraim Genuino, showered on Los Baños where his son ran for mayor in the May 2010 elections.

Chancellor Luis Rey Velasco of UP-Los Baños (UPLB) said the university received the multicabs about three years ago after requesting vehicles from the state-owned gaming firm.

“We wrote a letter asking for vehicles for use (by the university’s offices),” Velasco said in a phone interview on Monday.

He said the donated vehicles were “secondhand” and it was UPLB that had the plates changed to red, meaning these were government-owned.

However, Velasco said he wouldn’t know where Pagcor got the vehicles.

Pagcor chair Cristino Naguiat Jr., who described Los Baños as the most favored town of the previous Pagcor board, said it was Johnny Tan’s Kilton Motor Corp. that purportedly supplied some of the vehicles to Los Baños.

Tan was the second nominee of the Bida party-list group in the 2010 elections. The first nominee was Genuino’s daughter, Sheryl.

Velasco said the multicabs went to various UPLB offices but he was not sure if the vehicles were still operational today.

Apart from the vehicles, UPLB, through its College of Agriculture, received a P3-million grant from Pagcor.