Bangui mayor suspended for indiscriminate firing

BANGUI, Ilocos Norte—The provincial government has placed Mayor Diosdado Garvida under a monthlong preventive suspension pending an administrative charge for misconduct and abuse of authority after he allegedly fired a gun while confronting an unlicensed quarry operator in April.

Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos sent the provincial legal counsel to this town on Friday afternoon to serve Garvida his suspension order at the behest of the provincial board.

Garvida denied firing a gun on April 2 when he tried to stop a quarry operation in Barangay (village) Taguipuro here. “I have a gun but I did not fire it,” Garvida said in an earlier interview.

He said he responded to a complaint that quarrying had been taking place in Taguipuro. When he arrived there, Garvida said, he found six dump trucks and a payloader loading sand and gravel. “I told [the drivers of the trucks and the payloader] to stop but they just proceeded [with what they were doing],” he said. But the police received a complaint from Celso Ragudo that the mayor fired a gun to stop them from excavating sand and gravel.

The quarry group was operating on a private lot. The implementing rules and regulations of the Ilocos Norte Environment Code bar quarrying even on private land unless the operators get a permit from the provincial government.

Kremlin Alupay, the owner of the lot, filed the administrative complaint against Garvida, who was suspended so as not to influence the case. Garvida said the group he tried to stop had also been quarrying near the Bolo River. He said the group had yet to show a quarrying permit.—Leilanie Adriano