The Aquino government should cancel all permits to log in the mountains of Lanao del Sur province.
The logs that brought destruction to lives and property during Tropical Storm “Sendong,” which spawned floods in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, came from the mountains of Lanao del Sur, a predominantly Muslim area.
Logging is permitted in all areas covered by the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) as a concession to the Moros.
It looks like there were abuses committed in the use of the logging privilege.
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If your office or family is planning an excursion, don’t—repeat, don’t—include the Club Manila East, a resort hotel in Taytay, Rizal province, as your destination.
You might end up losing money and valuables in your room while you enjoy yourselves in the resort’s swimming pool.
Club Manila East has reportedly become notorious for rampant theft in the rooms of guests, but management seems not to care.
The latest victims are the Pelayos of Angeles City, Pampanga province—Gary and Riyet—and Riyet’s sisters and in-laws and their kids who were on vacation from abroad.
They lost an iPad, an e-notebook, a Playstation portable and Nintendo, cash totalling P105,000, Hong Kong dollars and clothes inside one of the cottages that they rented.
The Pelayos and their relatives checked in at Club Manila East on
Dec. 26 because their vacationing relatives stayed at a house on Ortigas Avenue, a few kilometers from the resort.
Riyet said that when they complained to the management about the theft, they were ignored.
The security guard who, they claimed, was arrogant, scolded them for leaving their valuables inside their room.
They paid P5,500 for the cottage and another P300 for the key to the room.
It could be an inside job as there was no sign of forcible entry, said Riyet in her complaint sent to my program, “Isumbong Mo kay Tulfo,” on Radyo Inquirer-dzIQ (990 khz AM), on Wednesday.
This was the third time I received a complaint from guests of the hotel resort.
Last year, a Filipino couple vacationing from Singapore lost their cash and valuables inside one of the cottages when they went for a swim.
Nothing came of the couple’s complaint as they went back to work in Singapore.
Another guest also went to my show and complained that he lost a motorcycle he left in the hotel’s parking area.
My “Isumbong” staff surfed the Internet for information on the hotel resort and found that four other hotel guests lost money and valuables inside their rooms in four separate incidents at Club Manila East in 2011.
One blogger said on May 23, 2011, at 3:09 a.m., “Last weekend my family and I discovered that our 3 cell phone units, a Nintendo DS lite and cash were stolen from the supposedly secured Cabana Hut of Club Manila East as it is a locked area with a key that they required us to pay a deposit, stating that there were only two sets of it, one with the admin and the other with the occupant of the day. There was no (sign of) forced entry. We complained but they have a weak investigation team. The hotel executives/management just ignored the complaint.”
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On June 1, 2011, my brother Erwin, in his column for People’s Tonight, criticized the hotel and some policemen in Taytay for the shabby handling of a complaint of some teen excursionists who lost money and valuables inside their room in the hotel.
The investigators at the Taytay police station, according to Erwin, took the complaint lightly and even flirted with the female teenagers.
I was told that had the parents of the teenagers not shown up at the station, the policemen wouldn’t have bothered to take down the complaint.