News Briefs

CASTRO FACES PLAINT FOR RULING ON MAYORAL BET’S CASE

A CEBU City prosecutor filed a case against her colleague whom she accused of allegedly resolving a complaint in favor of a party.

In her complaint before the Office of the Regional State Prosecutor Office, Asst. City Prosecutor Liceria Lofranco-Rabillas said Prosecutor Mary Ann Castro was biased towards Ricardo Reluya whose lawyer Oliveros Kintanar is reportedly Castro’s close friend.

Rabillas, who is assigned to review resolutions at the Cebu City Prosecutors’ Office, said she earlier reversed Castro’s ruling in the case filed by Reluya against San Fernando Mayor Antonio Canoy.

In response, Reluya filed a complaint against Rabillas before the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas for graft and corruption for reversing Castro’s findings.

Rabillas said Castro executed an affidavit as a  witness for Reluya.

“The actuation of Prosecutor Mary Ann Castro in executing an affidavit in favor of a litigant whom she favored in her resolution and is represented by a lawyer who represented her in her personal cases is a gross violation of the Code of Conduct for Prosecutors,” Rabillas said in her complaint.

In her counter-affidavit, Castro said the case filed by Rabillas was just intended to persecute her.

“In her verification alone, the honorable investigator would readily notice that complainant is respondent to a string of both criminal and administrative cases the undersigned filed against her in the Ombudsman Visayas,” Castro said. Reporter Ador Vincent Mayol

CEBU JOINS INTERNATIONAL COASTAL CLEANUP DAY

TWO hundred tons of garbage were collected by 20,000 volunteers in over 20 cities and towns in Central Visayas as part of the commemoration of International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) Day yesterday.

Volunteers went to beaches, coasts, waterways and underwater dive sites to pick up marine trash and debris.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said the activity covered 105 barangays where three major river systems and four creeks pass through in the region.

The ICC aims to raise  public awareness on how much trash we throw away ends up in water bodies  and contaminates them,  Regional DENR Executive Director Dr. Isabelo Montejo said in a statement.

ICC Day was first held in Texas, USA in 1986 and was then also celebrated in the country in 1993 after Presidential Proclamation (PP) No. 244 was issued declaring September of every year as the National Cleanup Month.

This was followed by PP470 issued in 2003, designating every third Saturday of September as ICC Day.

In an interview, Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort general manager Rhyz O. Buac said their company launched a monthly cleanup campaign called My Blu Earth joined by their staff, divers and non-divers.

For Cebu, the cleanup covered 52 coastal and inland barangays in Cebu City, 30 coastal and inland barangays in Lapu-Lapu City, Cordova town and Talisay City’s coastal barangays, the whole stretch of the Butuanon River and Jagobiao creek among others. Reporter Aileen Garcia-Yap and Correspondent Norman V. Mendoza