PNPA chief shuts down 17 businesses inside police academy

FILE PHOTO

SAN PEDRO, Laguna, Philippines — The director of the Philippine National Police Academy, who recently figured in a leadership squabble with the head of the Philippine Public Safety College (PPSC), ordered 17 business concessionaires inside the police academy shut down in a bid to rid the PNPA of corrupt practices.

Chief Supt. Noel Constantino on Thursday ordered the businesses to immediately close and vacate the stalls they occupied inside the police training campus in Camp Mariano Castañeda in Silang, Cavite.

The business concessionaires, who according to the PNPA chief operated “illegally,” were food service stalls, tailoring shops, a barbershop, a printing shop, a souvenir shop, and a travel agency desk.

Constantino, in a phone interview, said an internal investigation showed that the concessionaires had been operating, some of which started eight years ago, without a contract of service with the government. The business operators, he added, never paid rent, electricity and water bills, resulting in fund losses he estimated at “millions of pesos.”

The presence of illegal concessions in the police academy was one of the “irregularities” that Constanino said he wanted reformed.

Earlier, Constantino accused the PPSC, an attached agency of the Department of the Interior and Local Government that supervises the country’s police academies, of imposing unnecessary expenses on police cadets and of mishandling government funds.

Constantino believed this was the reason why his contract as chief of PNPA was terminated by PPSC President Ruben Platon on September 26. But President Aquino immediately reinstated Constantino and ordered an audit of the PPSC.

In an earlier phone interview, Platon said he took offense when Constantino made decisions involving the operation of PNPA without consulting the PPSC.

Constantino said the concessionaires, after complying with the closure order, could apply for a legitimate contract with the PNPA.

“I told them they will be given equal chances to apply but those will have to be covered by a contract,” he said.

In 2012, a fact-finding committee from the Office of the Ombudsman had called the PNPA’s attention for having too many private concessionaires in the campus.

A police official source said the investigation led to the filing of administrative and criminal charges against five former PNPA directors.

Facing gross neglect of duty and serious dishonesty and graft charges were retired police officers Senior Supt. Nestor Fajura, Senior Supt. Antonio Decano, Chief Supt. Danilo Abarzosa; Chief Supt. Clarence Guinto; and Senior Supt. Leonardo Cesneros.

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