By MAE SINGUAY
BACOLOD City — Councilor Carlos Jose Lopez laughed off reports saying an administrative case will be filed against him for his failure to turn over to the city government its patrol boat.
Reports had it that Reynaldo Ebreo, executive assistant to Mayor Monico Puentevella, will file the case with the Ombudsman.
“It would only show his stupidity and incompetence,” Lopez told reporters here.
He said the case will most likely be dismissed, and it would be a complete waste of time.
Besides, “I will turn over the patrol boat to the city through General Services Office head Gerome Solinap next week,” he said.
“They shouldn’t try to make fun of me,” he stressed. “I have experience in filing cases, and I have won many times.”
Ebreo last week said the city will ask the National Bureau of Investigation’s help in looking for the 28-foot patrol boat, which the city received as donation from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) in December 2012.
Lopez, who was suspected to be keeping the boat, said the equipment was with the forwarder (supplier), who would not release it because the city has not yet paid for its freight amounting to some P400,000.
He said he had written and spoke with Mayor Monico Puentevella about it many times, requesting for payment for the freight, to no avail.
“I got to talk to the Ombudsman and asked for an administrative adjudication, but they told me to just write them to request for assistance and [proceed with delivering] the patrol boat,” said the councilor.
Lopez said the Ombudsman can help conduct the necessary proceedings to make sure the supplier gets paid.
He said that he wrote the Commission on Audit (COA) to ask for the guidelines for the payment and that he will turn over the boat in the presence of an Ombudsman representative.
The city government under then Mayor Evelio Leonardia (now congressman) acquired the patrol boat from BFAR through Sen. Loren Legarda, an Audit Observation Memorandum from COA showed.
Addressed to Mayor Monico Puentevella, the memo said COA discovered that the P2,189,000 patrol boat was not accounted for as city government property.
“The patrol boat was not taken in the books of the city and not included in the inventory of government properties, based on the recent inventory report submitted by the General Services Office,” COA said.
Lopez had said the Leonardia administration cannot pay for the freight at the time due to the election ban, thus, his request to the forwarder to release the boat was not granted./PN
