Punchline
Expose. Investigate. Account
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
FOR a while, what I feared would happen to our call to the Dagupan city council to help make accountability in public office the norm happened when the draft resolution of Councilor Atty. Joey Netu Tamayo was not included in last week’s agenda. Fortunately, all’s not lost.
The PUNCH received word that finally Mr. Tamayo’s resolution has been calendared for this week’s session. I have yet to know why it was shelved the first time and who caused it to be excluded.
Mr. Tamayo’s proposed resolution was in direct response to this corner’s call to investigate anomalies and make officials account. Specifically, he asks for a special “blue ribbon”-type committee to be created to investigate the issues we raised in aid of legislation and to help establish accountability.
Those who missed our column two weeks ago, those we listed to be investigated are 1) Failure of the city agriculturist to enforce the city’s fishing ordinance. 2) Illegal occupation of beachfronts in Bonuan in violation of the national law protecting it. 3) Failure and refusal of past chairmen of fiestas and Bangus Festivals to report and account for monies received and spent. 4) Misleading reports of the city treasurer and past city auditor aimed at covering up anomalies in the city hall. 5). Failure of seller of 30-hectare land in San Jacinto to return the P16 million paid to him after failing to transfer title of the lot to the city, 6) Failure of the bids and awards committee to fully comply with the law for the sale of MC Adore properties.
I believe that once that committee is finally created and the integrity of the body has been established, others will start coming forward to present their own laundry lists of perceived anomalies where accountabilities need to be established. When that happens, Dagupeños can begin to sleep well and better knowing that someone is finally minding the store, watching out for well-dressed charming crooks.
My analogy for it is too see the committee functioning like the city’s CCTV camera, while the city legal office is the lawyer that files the cases before the Ombudsman for the victims – the Dagupeños!
Will it take another 75 days to see this committee created? I pray not. Will the members of the minority object to its creation? I pray not.
How the councilors will respond and react to the resolution and how it finally functions will be worth watching.
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CONTINUING COVER-UP IN THE CITY. I am not really surprised about the announcement of Dagupan City Treasurer Romelita Alacantara that the Fernandez administration will suffer if it fails to collect P30 million more by the end of the year.
For once, she is being candid about the awful truth obtaining in the city at least on the revenue projection side. But all that that she has painted to Mayor Belen Fernandez is not even half of the truth of the matter. In fact, she continues to mislead the city in a vain attempt to protect those responsible for past misdeeds of the Lim administration. Her claim that the shortfall was a result of the mistake of the finance committee (of the Lim administration) when it “overestimated” the potential revenues of the city is the farthest from the truth!
The projection was in fact so conservative in order to allow for a premeditated plunder. The projection could not even help the city earn back its first class classification. A busy city like Dagupan can never experience a decline in revenues, unless another 7.8 intensity earthquake hits the city.
What she is not telling the city is that that the reported shortfall is a direct result of the failure of the syndicate inside the city mayor’s office to moderate its greed while the boss was pursuing graft-tainted projects. Worse, she knew the whole modus operandi of the syndicate operated by high-ranking city officials.
Let’s call a spade a spade with her.
The downgrading of the city from first class to second class was a direct consequence of the failure of her office to produce the minimum revenues to justify a first class classification yet she was never held accountable and responsible for this most embarrassing development. How and why did that happen?
My mole explained that the syndicate that operated in the city hall knew of the series of unused official receipts of the city. With this information, it printed fake duplicates of the same series and issued these fake ORs to unsuspecting compliant Dagupeños. To say that thousands were lost to the syndicate is a huge understatement. Try millions!
Wonder no more why the city’s markets only yielded an average of P350,000 in monthly revenues under the Lim administration when the Fernandez administration today is able to collect more than a million a month. It’d be interesting to hear Market Administrator Aguedo Sta. Maria explain the magic of the disappearing collections. The collection of business taxes remained flat for the past 3 years when establishments were reporting growth. The head of Mr. Lim’s One-Stop Shop certainly has a lot of explaining to do. Then wonder no more why there appears to be a big number of delinquent landowners. Is it possible that such a big number of landowners who understand how the value of land appreciates would default in payments of taxes? (The plan of Mayor Belen to meet the “delinquents” will likely reveal more than what is being claimed by the city assessor and city treasurer).
It is simply not possible for Ms. Alcantara to claim that she didn’t know that collections were being pocketed by a syndicate in the city hall through the use of fake ORs because her staff knew about it. To insist on it would be an admission that she is either so incompetent or so dumb to be so clueless. Incompetent perhaps but certainly not dumb.
Either way, Ms. Alcanatara does not deserve to remain as city treasurer for another day, and if it’s still not too late for her, she should resign. But first make her account.
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NOT TO BE DISCARDED. There is a large and untapped source of manpower and brainpower in all communities today. The number of senior citizens in each town and city in the province are growing so fast that many fastfood shops can hardly cope servicing them.
Their growing presence should be instructive to all sanggunian panglungsod and bayan in the province that it’s time to craft a resolution that would consciously create opportunities to continue to harness their skills and talents. And I don’t mean that the retirees should be recruited as mere volunteers in some community projects. I am talking about identifying opportunities to employ them and pay them reasonable salaries. They deserve to be paid for their service too. Offhand, they make authoritative sources for information campaigns on any service or need. Try making them members of task forces.
There are among them outstanding engineers, teachers, lawyers, accountants, nurses, doctors, carpenters, architects, electricians, plumbers, writers, soldiers, photographers, artists, welders, manicurists, sales managers, masseuse, etc. (even priests and nuns) who excelled in their respective fields and still can give many of the young a run for their money. They remain able-bodied, never mind that their grey hairs have thinned or heads are completely bald, it’s their lifetime experience that must be tapped and not to be discarded.
When you meet a senior citizen, don’t judge him/her by his senior discount card but by the lifetime experience that can still make a difference for communities and families.
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ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. Our sincerest condolences to Nestor Pulido and the rest of the surviving family of Alice Pulido, the feisty, no-nonsense public servant who enjoyed the respect of her community not only in Anda but in her district. It was a privilege meeting her in the past, engaging her on her commitment and dedication to public service.
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