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Thursday, March 24, 2005
Councilor blames GSO for late listing of vehicles
By Rene H. Martel
IF the renewal of the Cebu City councilors’ vehicle registrations was delayed, the General Services Office (GSO) should take the blame and pay the penalty.
So said Majority Floor Leader Jocelyn Pesquera, adding she made sure that the councilors’ vehicles, along with the mayor and vice mayor’s, underwent smoke emission tests before the registrations expired last October.
But, she said, the GSO failed to process the registration on time, and only accomplished this last March 5, 2005.
City Hall now needs to pay the Land Transportation Office (LTO) P20,450 as penalty for late registration, since all of their Mitsubishi Adventures were supposed to be registered before the end of October last year.
Pesquera discovered GSO’s failure when she asked the office for her vehicle’s registration in November last year. She was told the GSO had no budget for the registration.
“I’m sure there was (a budget) because we made sure that we approved the allocation before the cars were bought,” Pesquera said in a telephone interview.
Next week
She opted to register the vehicle herself and paid for the registration as well as insurance coverage.
Sun.Star Cebu also learned that LTO actually approved the councilors’ vehicle registration applications after the City paid P44,150.
That means all of their Mitsubishi Adventures were registered for the year.
However, Cebu City licensing district head Aleta Pulga did not sign the official receipts (ORs), pending payment of the P20,450, said GSO’s George Neri.
The City, Pulga said in a telephone interview last Tuesday, promised to pay next week.
Councilor Sylvan Jako-salem, chairman of the council committee on transportation, communication and other utilities, said they will pay if it is determined that their respective offices failed to do their jobs.
“But if it’s the fault of another department, I think it would not be fair (if we are made to pay the penalty),” he said.
Blame GSO
In a separate interview, Councilor Augustus Pe Jr. was more vocal, saying GSO should be the one to pay because the councilors met the conditions on time.
“Nganong dili man pabayron ang in-charge sa registration, those people from GSO who failed to register (our vehicles) on time?” he said.
GSO had asked that smoke emission test results be submitted a month before the vehicle registrations expired, but complained that drivers of the City-owned cars did not heed the request.
Pesquera, however, said that as far as the city councilors were concerned, all of them submitted the test results before October last year, with several of them even shelling out personal money for the test.
Mario Mondares, GSO property division chief, earlier said the problem of late or non-registration of City Hall vehicles has been his headache for years.
Warning
That is often caused by the drivers’ failure to submit the smoke emission test results at least a month before the expiration date, so GSO has ample time to process the vouchers.
Last February, for example, the City failed to renew the registrations of 38 vehicles due that month, because GSO received only 16 smoke emission test results.
These were submitted only in the last week of that month.
Mayor Tomas Osmeña then issued a memorandum warning councilors and department heads to submit the smoke emission test results on time.
If they failed, they would have to shoulder the penalty LTO imposes on late renewals of vehicle registrations, which is at least P1,000, or 50 percent of the motor vehicle user’s charge.
(March 24, 2005 issue)
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