Thursday, November 22, 2007 Hold it: Santiago tells Pelaez
OMBUDSMAN Director Virginia Santiago called for consideration over the office’s perceived delay in resolving the complaint against Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza.
Santiago, who just returned from a trip to Jakarta, Indonesia on an errand for Tanodbayan Merceditas Gutierrez, said no delay has been incurred.
Investigations, she said, simply take time.
She said the complaint businessman Efrain Pelaez Jr. filed against the city mayor is being treated as a fact-finding investigation and was not elevated immediately as a formal criminal and administrative complaint.
“I would not say we are starting from the bottom because he (Pelaez) did submit certain documents. But we are building the case up and are looking for the evidence needed to determine whether to elevate or dismiss,” Santiago said.
“When the office receives a complaint, it is evaluated and determined if it falls as a formal complaint or a request for assistance or a complaint requiring fact-finding investigation,” she further said.
The fact that Pelaez’s complaint, which came with attachment, is being subjected to a fact-finding investigation means that it was evaluated to be insufficient in form and substance to be treated as a formal complaint.
Attention
Santiago said the agency has had its share of people demanding immediate attention on the complaints they file.
“It is normal for a complainant to feel that his case is the biggest of them all. Meanwhile, there are people in Leyte who are drowning in flood waters because funds for a drainage project have been lost,” she said.
The Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas handles cases from three regions—Eastern, Western and Central Visayas.
Pelaez earlier scored the agency during an all-lawyer’s forum.
He said the complaint he filed against Radaza last September, which accused the mayor of approving the overpriced purchase of 470 personal computers worth P23.4 million at P50,000 each, remains pending until now.
Other investigations against Radaza, including the one on his alleged involvement in the overpriced Asean summit lampposts, have likewise not budged.
Overpriced
In the alleged overpriced computers issue, Pelaez said the units were actually worth less than half the unit price at the time of the purchase.
“The actual unit cost could even be less because, as the Commission on Audit (COA) has found out, what was delivered to the schools were PCs of inferior specifications like Celeron instead of the specified Pentium 4 processors with 256 instead of the specified 512 megabytes of memory,” he said.
He attached the COA report and newspaper clippings in his letter-complaint.
Among other annexes was a document showing that 60 computer units were sent to schools in the islands of Pangan-an and Caubian although there is no electricity in those areas.
Impleaded in the charge are Radaza, City Attorney Vincent Joseph Lim, City Administrator Teodulo Ybañez, Assistant City Engineer Fernando Tagaan, City Budget Officer Victoria Andoy, City Treasurer Elena Pacaldo, Legal Officer Michael Dignos, Maria Guiao of the Procurement Office, Technical Working Group members Cipriano Flores, Maribeth Sorono, Rogelio Veloso, Sharon Baguio Buenaventura Igot, and Jerico Mercado.
Likewise included are Leandro Dante, Ernesto Imbong and Rogaciano Tampos, inspectors at the Office of the City Accountant, Treasurer and General Services Office respectively, Lapu-Lapu City Schools Superintendent Serena Uy and one Jennet Valencia, manager of Kein Enterprises and the supplier of the alleged overpriced computer units. (KNR)
