Wednesday, April 23, 2008 Projects, service won’t be affected despite ruling, engineers assure
THE lawyer representing the four high-ranking Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) 7 officials ordered dismissed from service and criminally charged because of the Asean Summit lamppost scam is filing an appeal.
Lawyer Joey Luis Wee, in an interview over ABS-CBN, said he wants to question the ruling before the Court of Appeals (CA). He cited several procedural lapses by the investigating panel that handled the case.
DPWH officials, however, are making sure the decision won’t affect their work.
DPWH 7 Director Josefino Rigor said the agency is ready to fill the vacancies if the dismissed officials will stop reporting for work.
Rigor, in a radio dyLA interview, said they have “capable” officials who could replace them so that not one of the ongoing projects would be affected.
The officials, however, will have to wait for the dismissal order from DPWH Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane.
“While waiting for the order, they will continue with their work,” he said, adding that none of the officials received any document from the Office of the Ombudsman as of yesterday.
Newly appointed Mandaue City Engineer Antonio Sanchez shared the same observation.
Sanchez said the Tanodbayan’s order is not yet final and executory so they can still work and receive their regular pay while seeking for reconsideration or appealing the order.
One of the respondents, Assistant City Engineer Gregorio Omo told Sun.Star Cebu he is still consulting his lawyer on what legal remedy he could avail himself of.
Engineer Gloria Dindin, assistant director for operations and one of those facing termination from service, yesterday said the Ombudsman’s decision is an unpleasant birthday gift for her.
Dindin said that when she celebrated her 60th birthday last year, she was given the suspension order, together with eight other DPWH colleagues.
“This coming April 30, I will celebrate my 61st birthday and I am facing a termination order. God knows I am innocent. I will leave everything to God”, Dindin said.
She said they have not received a copy of the decision and were surprised that the media learned ahead of them.
“The media were already asking for our reactions even before we got to read the decision. But even then, we believed the reports,” Dindin said.
Dindin said this is the first time for her to be involved in such a controversy in her 38 years of government service.
“The people are asking me why it happened to me when I am very strict in following the law. I even got the ire of my colleagues because I corrected some errors. But now, it is happening to me”, Dindin said.
Wee represented ex-DPWH 7 Director Roberto Lala, Assistant Directors Dindin and Pureza Fernandez, and division chief Cresencio Bagolor during the preliminary investigation and administrative adjudication of the case that also impleaded officials from the local governments of Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue.
The panel formed by then Acting Deputy Ombudsman Virginia Santiago, is composed of graft investigators Jane Aguilar, Sarah Jo Vergara and Gaudioso Melendez.
Wee said the panel did not give due course to important issues – a motion for inhibition, an omnibus motion, an urgent motion to resolve the omnibus motion, a motion for reconsideration and an aide memoir – that he raised during the investigation.
These are significant as the panel considered the DPWH officials as the most apparently liable.
“Of all respondents, (the) DPWH officials are the ones who most obviously appear to be liable. As a whole, they approved all the programs of work, awarded the projects to the winning contracts, and executed the corresponding contracts. Virtually, they administered and supervised the acquisition and installation of the lampposts,” the panel said.
In their recommendation, which Tanodbayan Merceditas Gutierrez approved last Monday, the panel noted how Wee didn’t submit counter-affidavits for his clients.
“All they filed were various motions raising collateral matters such as the alleged need for this office to inhibit itself from investigating this case and how they purportedly could not prepare their answer on account of missing attachments to the complaints,” the decision read. (KNR/EOB/OCP)
