Biazon welcomes new faces at Customs

Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon: Any Malacañang appointees welcomed. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Commissioner Ruffy Biazon on Tuesday welcomed “any new Malacañang appointees” to the Bureau of Customs (BOC), saying he was “ready to work with them anytime.”

This after reports said retired Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff Jessie Dellosa and two others had been recommended for deputy commissioner posts at the BOC by Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima.

The BOC is a Department of Finance-attached agency.

Purisima reportedly endorsed Dellosa to be customs deputy commissioner for intelligence and enforcement. The position merges the jobs of Deputy Commissioner for Enforcement Horacio Suansing Jr. and resigned Deputy Commissioner Danny Lim.

Purisima also nominated Trinidad Rodriguez, executive director of the National Tax Research Center, and Myrna Chua, director at the Department of Budget and Management. They would replace Deputy Commissioners Peter Manzano and Juan Lorenzo Tañada, the latter having also resigned.

Two others, Primo Aguas and Agaton Teodoro Uvero, have been recommended by Purisima to take over the posts currently held by Ma. Caridad Manarang, head of the BOC management information system, and Prudencio Reyes, chief of the bureau’s assessment and operations coordinating group.

Biazon, meanwhile, has issued a CPO (Customs Personnel Order) directing BOC officials and employees to return to their mother units.

The CPO covers, among others, the agency’s 17 district collectors, including the so-called “three kings”—Ricardo Belmonte, Carlos So and Rogel Gatchalian.

Belmonte, head of the Manila International Container Port (MICP), will move back to the Port of Cebu. So, chief of the BOC office at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, will return to the MICP. Gatchalian will remain as district collector at the Port of Manila, which happens to be his mother unit.

Earlier, Biazon announced that three district collectors would be retained at their posts. They were Tomas Alcid of the Port of Batangas, Fidel Villanueva of San Fernando, La Union, and Elvie Cruz of the Limay and Mariveles ports in Bataan.

The commissioner explained that Alcid was newly assigned to the Batangas port, while Villanueva and Cruz were handling port containerization and the merger of the two Bataan ports, respectively.