Tuesday, April 03, 2007 Speak out: An open letter to Tomas Osmeña By Cynthia Abarquez Mabolo, Cebu City
STOP pointing your finger at Mayors Teddy Ouano and Arturo Radaza for the lamppost scandal. The 360 or so lamps that Cebu City purchased were also overpriced by at least P50,000 each.
In fact, you were the one who received a letter from businessman Crisologo Saavedra regarding the true cost of these lamps (Please refer to Sun.Star Cebu issue dated March 13, 2007). In this letter, you were informed that the lamps should only cost about P32,800 each and this would have already included the installation cost. Yet, Cebu still purchased the said lamps for P85,000 each. That translates to about P18.7 million worth of overpricing.
Sure, the overpriced amount was not as much as Mandaue’s or Lapu-Lapu’s but an overpriced lamppost is still an overpriced lamppost regardless of the peso amount. Therefore, you are just as culpable as the other two mayors.
Point a finger at them but your other fingers point right back at you. You are a pot calling the kettle black. You also deserve to be suspended.
