BAGUIO CITY—A water treatment and refilling company here was ordered closed on Tuesday in a move that the company owners decried as a form of harassment linked with the ongoing debt feud in Camp John Hay.
John Hay Springs Inc. (JHSI) and its mother firm, John Hay Water System Inc. (JHWSI), have also been accused of tapping into the water source of John Hay without permission from the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), which a JHSI official said it had been doing with BCDA’s blessing since 1999.
JHSI lawyers have asked John Hay Management Corp. (JHMC) to withdraw the security team guarding their client’s facility.
In a March 28 letter sent to JHMC vice president Mita Angela Dimalanta, the law firm Adarlo Caoile and Associates said the cease-and-desist order was “illegal, invalid, baseless and unenforceable.”
“[These] supposed violations are obvious trumped-up charges conjured to simply harass our client and needlessly drag it into the ongoing dispute between your office and the [CJHDevco] (Camp John Hay Development Corp.),” it said.
The statement said JHSI and JHWSI are part of the joint venture agreement between CJHDevco and JLM Realty Development Corp.
JHSI’s lawyers said JHMC mistook an expired operational permit issued by the Cordillera office of the Department of Health for an expired Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) permit. They said the DOH permit was renewed on March 26, the same day the facility was inspected by BFAD and JHMC.
“Our client does not need to obtain the written approval or authority from the BCDA as provided in the 1996 original lease agreement,” the lawyers said.
They demanded that the order be lifted immediately and warned they would be forced to sue if the order was enforced.
In a phone interview, James Molina, the JHSI president, said the firm has been operating with the blessing of BCDA since 1999 until the debt feud between the CJHDevco and BCDA erupted again.
“This [debt conflict] has placed everyone operating inside John Hay in a bind, particularly those of us, investors, who are caught in the middle,” Molina said.
Molina said JHSI was not required to secure a certificate of product registration from BFAD because his company has been engaged in water refilling and not the manufacture and retail of bottled water. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon