Officials to file raps against organizers

THE Caloocan City barangay officials who fell ill after partaking of a dinner buffet in a Cebu City hotel will file a complaint against the organizers of this week’s Lakbay Aral tour that they joined in.

Manuel de Leon, a barangay chairman in Caloocan City, told Cebu Daily News that he and other barangay officials will submit their complaints to the Liga ng mga Barangay against the barangay committee that organized the tour.

De Leon, one of the officials who was confined in one of two Lapu-Lapu City hospitals for acute gastroenteritis, said they were compelled by the tour organizers to sign a waiver so they can be discharged and take the scheduled return flight to Manila last Thursday afternoon.

De Leon said another batch of barangay officials will come to Cebu and stay in the same hotel they were billeted in, the Crown Regency Hotel in Lapu-Lapu City, for a three-day Lakbay Aral tour.

“They didn’t even take care of us. They should have allowed us to recover first before going home,” De Leon said in Filipino.

He said he asked for a medical certificate but was dissuaded from doing so by the organizers.

Lapu-Lapu City Health Officer Dr. Rodulfo Berame said their department sent their sanitary inspectors and found nothing wrong with the food handling and preparation of the Cebu City hotel.

Earlier Dr. Bolivar Miñoza, chief of the Lapu-Lapu City District Hospital where some of the barangay officials were confined, said initial lab tests are inconclusive and they needed more time to verify them.

He said they are not ruling out food poisoning as the cause of the incident.

Miñoza said the barangay officials were supposed to be admitted for observation but they signed a waiver to be discharged from the hospital so they can continue treatment in Manila.

He said they were given oral rehydration solutions and advised to drink plenty of liquids for their trip back home.

Eduardo Sanggol, the manager of Crown Regency Hotel in Osmeña Boulevard, said they are conducting their own investigation into the incident. Correspondent Norman V. Mendoza