NEWS BRIEFS
COOP FOR TRIKE DRIVERS PUSHED
MANDAUE City Hall wants the city’s tricycle operators and drivers to form their own cooperative so they can immediately pursue an alternative livelihood.
Mayor Jonas Cortes said it is high time for tricycle operators and drivers to drive their own jeepneys and multicabs in order to hasten the phasing out of tricycle units in the city.
He said while the phaseout isn’t immediate since tricycles are still allowed to ply the interior portions of the barangays, a mass transit system will do away with their presence in the city’s streets.
Cortes said a mass transit system will serve as the gateway to both the northern and southern part of the province.
“Once the co-op exists, we can provide the seed money they can use to purchase the vehicles,” Cortes said.
Article continues after this advertisementThe mayor wants a moratorium set on the payment of the mayor’s permit to tricycle operators this year to encourage them to create their own cooperative.
Article continues after this advertisementBut the moratorium still needs an endorsement by the City Council.
City Treasurer Regal Oliva said the city will lose P3.2 million in payments for the mayor’s permits due to the moratorium. Correspondent Norman V. Mendoza
CUSTOMS EMPLOYEES SANCTIONED
TWO employees of the Bureau of Customs were suspended for three months after being found guilty for the loss of nearly a thousand confiscated watches in December 2005.
The employees are Cirilo Arong, warehouseman of the BOC sub-port in Lapu-Lapu City and Customs operation officer Jane Maye.
Maye has already retired and the Ombudsman ordered her to pay a fine equivalent to her salary for three months.
Arong’s request to reduce the penalty against him since it was his first offense in more than 32 years of service was denied by the Ombudsman.
The issue stemmed from the complaint filed by Medardo de Lemos, former director of the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7).
In December 2005, about 5,858 confiscated wristwatches consisting of Seiko, Guess, Citizen and Casio G-shock brands worth P2.6 million were scheduled for auction.
But an inventory revealed that 949 pieces of the watches worth at least P421,000 were missing.
Then Customs district collector Lourdes Mangaoang requested the NBI to investigate the loss.
The NBI-7 found out that Maye, who was then vice chairman of the auction and cargo disposal committee, pulled out 21 boxes of the watches on Dec. 20, 2005 from the Custom’s bonded warehouse.
Without any police escort, the boxes were brought to the conference room of the Customs building.
A witness testified that Maye removed several watches from the boxes and placed them inside her pockets.
There were other witnesses who claimed that Maye only turned over 11 of the 21 boxes of wristwatches to the U-Freight bonded warehouse.
Arong was implicated in the charges because he was the warehouseman and the person in charge of the items.
The anti-graft office said Arong didn’t observe the rules pertaining to the conduct of inventory.
He and other BOC employees just copied the figures in the past inventory when the boxes containing the wristwatches were not even opened at all.
Arong alledly signed the inventory and made it appear that an actual inventory was conducted. Reporter Ador Vincent Mayol
