By Leoanrdo Micua

 

WATCHING and listening to Senator Ronald de la Rosa speaking out on YouTube against  those involved in the pilferage of 990 kilograms of shabu worth P6.7 billion, we got the impression that the drug problem in the country today still lingers, and with greater impunity despite the six-year drug war of the past Duterte administration.

During the continuation of the Senate investigation on Thursday to ferret out the truth and those  behind the pilferage of 990 kilograms of shabu seized at the WPD Lending Office in Manila on October 8, 2022, a number of police officers and men were being implicated in the caper, including the obvious cover up to shield one, two or three of their kind from criminal responsibility.

Recall that this incident was the main reason why Interior and Local Government Secretary Benhur Abalos demanded the resignation of all generals and colonels in the Philippine National Police. He said he could not stomach the fact that some ranking officers of the organization were secretly profiting from sales of pilfered shabu skimmed from earlier anti-drug operations of the police, while the rest are sincerely fighting the pushers and drug lords, risking their lives in the process.

To us, this is the biggest scandal that some officers and men of the Philippine National Police are into ever, and those implicated were as high as Generals and Colonels, clearly tarnishing the good image of the organization, shrouding its many splendid accomplishments across  the years.

We gathered in that probe that this big volume of shabu was found in the establishment in Tondo owned by Police Master Sergeant Rodolfo Mayo, who was among those placed in the hot seat by the senate committee headed by Senator Bato.

There were CCTV footages shown in the hearing, similar to those earlier presented by SILG Abalos in a press conference, clearly identifying those who conspired in the caper and in the alleged cover up of the same.

Unfortunately, one of the PNP officers being pinned down to own up his participation into that shady transaction worked for some time as provincial officer of the CIDG in Pangasinan in the person of Lt. Colonel Arnulfo Ibanez, whom Mayo was taking orders from.

Senator Bato was himself surprised why Mayo was able to come back and resume his police duties in Luzon, when in fact during his term as PNP chief and director general, he already banished him to Mindanao for his alleged wrongdoing in the service.

We are not prejudging the cases of these police officers and men, some of whom are yet to face formal charges before the Ombudsman. But what we cannot understand was on how come their illicit drug operations were not detected and exposed during the past administration that declared the war on drugs.

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We heard that the Laoag City General Hospital put up as an economic enterprise of the city government of Laoag a few years ago is not performing at par financially and all its doctors, nurses and other personnel are suffering due to delayed payment of salaries.

This was confirmed by Mayor Michael Marcos Keon, who said the salaries of workers of the hospital need not come from the coffers of the Laoag LGU but from the income of the hospital drawn from fees collected from patients being served.

Unfortunately, due to lack of modern facilities, like ultra sound machine, CT Scan and others, it can only cater to a few patients and was, therefore, not earning the revenues that could bankroll its operations, including the salaries of its workers.

This could have happened in Dagupan City had Mayor Belen Fernandez continued the grandiose plan of then former Mayor Benjamin Lim to put up a city hospital at the Juan P. Guadiz  Elementary School in Poblacion Oeste in 2013, which he then deemed to relocate to a new three-storey school building he built at great cost at the premises of the City Engineering Office.

Fortunately, the Department of Education did not approve the transfer of Juan P. Guadiz School to another site and nipped Lim’s plan in the bud to give Dagupan its own hospital. But based on records of finances of the city, Dagupan already initially spent for initial ground preparations of the project. 

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