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MANDAUE CITY, Philippines - At least 44 decorative lampposts worth P9.8 million are gone from a street in Mandaue City.
They were removed under unclear circumstances from A.C. Cortes Street in Mandaue City.
Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas Pelagio Apostol on Monday ordered a fact-finding team to conduct an inventory and find out who took out the dome-shaped lampposts without permission from the anti-graft office.
The lampposts, which cost P224,000 each, serve as “evidence” in the pending graft complaint arising from the multi-million-peso infrastructure spending in Cebu for the 12th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in January last year.
The graft cast was filed against two private contractors along with the Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu city mayors and their engineering staff, and seven ranking officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways in Central Visayas (DPWH-7).
“The lampposts serve as our evidence. I am really surprised. They shouldn't remove the lampposts because they can be held responsible for removing vital evidence without clearance from us,” Apostol said.
“There is no consent from the office of the contractor or any government agency to remove the lampposts,” he added.
Both the DPWH-7 and the Mandaue City government denied removing the lampposts.
The 44 China-made lampposts were discovered missing by a team of Ombudsman investigators during an ocular inspection on Monday.
What remains is the concrete base foundation of the decorative lampposts. The number of the missing lampposts is too many to be explained as simple looting.
Associate Graft Investigator Rod Blazo, head of the fact-finding team, said he asked Mandaue City Administrator Briccio Boholst and Ayaon Manggis, DPWH-7 legal officer II, about the disappearance. Both denied ordering their pullout.
One possibility is that the private contractor, Fabmik Construction Equipment Corp. Inc., removed it.
“Attorney Boholst told us that they were also surprised about the removal of the lampposts. He told us that Fabmik admitted that they removed the lampposts because those were not part of the contract with DPWH. We are still waiting for the official report of the DPWH and we'll see what our next move is,” he said.
He said that while the lampposts have not yet been turned over by the contractor to the DPWH, these are still considered government property because the public works department paid P120 million of the P365-million contract price.
The release of the balance was frozen by the Ombudsman pending resolution of the graft case.
Blazo said they would look into claims of Fabmik that the 44 lampposts were not part of the contract.
“The government has already paid millions of pesos for the project and we can't allow this. There is a pending case and their removal is of course questionable. Why now?” he asked.
Cebu Daily News called the office of Fabmik on Osmeña Boulevard, Cebu City, but the man who answered the phone said the Fabmik staff had moved to Makati City.
Boholst, in a separate interview, said he overheard one of the lawyers of Fabmik during a meeting with Governor Gwendolyn Garcia last month say that they would remove the lampposts along A.C. Cortes Avenue because these were not part of the contract.
He said that late last year, they received a call from concerned citizens that lampposts in Mandaue were uprooted.
This was verified when City Hall personnel went to the area.
“We are really caught by surprise. We didn't think it was so serious until the anti-graft investigators came to see us this afternoon,” he said.
Francisco Amit, legal counsel of Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes, said the city government did not authorize the removal of the lampposts.
“We were caught by surprise. Since it is our stand not to accept the project until the case is resolved, it is impossible for the mayor to order the removal of the lampposts,” he said.
Manggis, for his part, said the DPWH-7 did not give clearance to Fabmik to uproot the lampposts.
Since there is a pending case before the anti-graft office, he said the contractor should have been prudent enough to ask clearance from the Ombudsman Visayas first.
Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas Apostol said he was puzzled why the lampposts were taken out.
The pending case alleges that the P365-million project to install ASEAN summit lampposts was overpriced.
He said he is reviewing the recommendations of the anti-graft panel before sending the case records to Manila for approval of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez.
Among the respondents of the complaint are former Mandaue mayor Thadeo Ouano and members of his engineering staff then – former city engineer Hidelisa Latonio, assistant city engineer Gregorio Omo and engineers Mario Gerolaga, Alfred Sanchez Sr. and Rosalina Dengue.
At the Lapu-Lapu end, implicated in the case were City Mayor Arturo Radaza and city engineer's office personnel — Julito Cuizon, Fernando Tagaan Jr. and Rogelio Veloso.
The other respondents were DPWH-7 officials who were involved in the ASEAN Summit preparations. They were former regional director Roberto Lala, assistant regional directors Marlina Alvizo and Gloria Dindin, acting chief of the maintenance division Pureza Fernandez, acting maintenance division chief Cresencio Bagolor, legal office Agustinito Hermoso, planning and design division chief Luis Galang, administrative division chief Restitutio Diano and construction division chief Buenaventura Pajo.
