FOLLOWING the supposed unauthorized withdrawal of 105 shipping containers from Manila South Harbor's port, President Rodrigo Duterte fired Customs Deputy Commissioner Noel Patrick Prudente effective Wednesday, May 30.
Duterte announced Prudente's dismissal in an impromptu speech he delivered Wednesday during the condemnation of smuggled luxury motor vehicles at the Bureau of Customs (BOC) in Port Area Manila.
"He (Prudente) is now under investigation by the House. The investigation, as well as the recommendation, will take long. So I will cut short the agony of Congress. I'm firing him today -- Noel Patrick Sales Prudente," Duterte said in an impromptu speech.
"(He is a) deputy commissioner. So I will make it easy for Congress. I'm firing him effective today," he added.
Duterte's statement came after the House ways and means committee launched an investigation into reports that 105 shipping containers had slipped past Manila South Harbor's port operator Asian Terminal Inc. (ATI), after the BOC issued "manual" electronic alert orders.
The probe stemmed from the House Resolution 1824 lodged by Sultan Kudarat Representative Horacio Suansing Jr., questioning the manual alerts issued from January to March this year.
On March 19, the BOC found that the 105 containers, with a declared value of at least P69 million, were purportedly released by ATI on March 17 without proper clearances and documents from the port of Manila.
Prudente, deputy commissioner of BOC's Management Information Systems and Technology Group, had explained to the lawmakers that the alert orders were manually issued because of the "slow" response to the lodging of entry, noting that on the average, 6,000 entries are being processed a day.
Prudente, who was appointed to the BOC in February 2018, is the latest public official fired by Duterte, amid the anti-corruption crackdown in government.
Duterte, who presented documents during the BOC event, found that Prudente made excessive foreign trips.
"(Prudente went on a) personal travel to Singapore (and) personal travel to Europe," the President said.
"The military and the police know that. Do you think they do not know that? You don't know about it but we are all being monitored. Because the Customs (bureau), I said, it's always being considered as purgatory of government service," he added.
Apart from Prudente, Duterte also sacked Government Corporate Counsel Rudolf Philip Jurado and Transportation Secretary Mark Tolentino on May 28 and May 21, respectively.
Jurado was accused of favoring gambling and gaming firms, while Tolentino allegedly had "dealings" with Duterte's sister. (SunStar Philippines)