Thursday, August 09, 2007 Espinoza: Cuenco should also explain By Elias L. Espinoza Free Zone
PASSENGERS waiting for their turn to board an airplane should be wary of this posh coffee shop/resto bar inside the terminal of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport. A waiter and a cashier there hit unsuspecting customers by jacking up food or drink prices.
A friend, who asked not to be named, related to me how he was victimized by the waiter and the cashier. He ordered a sausage and a glass of red wine while waiting for his turn to board an aircraft for Manila.
When the last call for boarding was heard from the airport’s paging system, he asked for his bill. He would have paid for it immediately had he not overheard the complaint of the other customers over the price.
My friend checked his bill and noticed that he was billed more than what he ate and drank. He complained but the cashier could not offer an explanation. Since he had to board the plane, he insisted on paying the correct bill and asked for a receipt.
Upon his return to Cebu, he wrote the management of the coffee shop/resto bar but never got even a courtesy reply. The letter, sent on May 25 or 15 days after the incident, merely asked management to investigate possible shenanigans of its employees.
My friend said management is either not aware of the mischief committed by the employees or is tolerating it.
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Rep. Tony Cuenco should still be made to explain questions on the manner his pork barrel funds were spent. As the funds’ provider, he is responsible in seeing to it that these reach the right hands. It is taxpayers’ money and thus he is accountable for it.
Based on a Commission on Audit (COA) report, it is apparent that no proper system in the release of the funds and the purchase of vaccines for rabies was in place.
That Dell Pharmacy possessed and controlled the release of the vaccines to patients is highly irregular considering that the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) has its own pharmacy. Cuenco should not have allowed this to happen.
I am not saying that Cuenco or his staff had a hand in the release of the vaccines to fictitious patients bearing prescriptions with forged signatures of physicians. The COA finding that the doctors denied having signed those prescriptions is more than prima facie evidence for the Ombudsman to indict those responsible.
The amount involved may be small compared with the money wasted in ghost infrastructure projects but still these are public funds taken from the hemorrhaging national coffers.
Newly appointed Deputy Ombudsman Pelagio Apostol will have his hands full uncovering fraudulent transactions at VSMMC. The public is eager to see big fishes brought to justice for corruption and abusing taxpayers’ money.
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Brig. Gen. Arthur Mancenido, commander of the Helicopter Wing of the Philippines Air Force, denied they ran away from their responsibility to the victims of the chopper crash in Basak, Lapu-Lapu City.
In my chance talk with Mancenido the other day, he said that the Air Force paid for the hospitalization of the victims and their continuing medication. Mancenido frankly admitted they could not give to the victims more than what the Air Force could provide.
He said the tricycle driver was given a new tricycle. Relatives of the other victims were enlisted into the Air Force and are now on training. One was enlisted even if his family was filing a case against the Air Force.
Mancenido said the Air Force could not do anything if the victims, despite their efforts to help, will still file a civil suit. He said that it is their right to do so.
