Monday, August 15, 2005
Treasury grafters, mayor's next target
By Ben O. Tesiorna
AFTER the Local Civil Registry, the Business Bureau, and the Ma-a slaughterhouse, City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte continues his drive to fire workers involved in graft and corruption in the City Treasurer's Office (CTO).
The mayor sees the move as the only way to regain the trust and confidence of Dabawenyos who he claimed have been seeking better services from the City Government.
Duterte said he would not think twice about replacing all employees of a department.
"I am removing employees of corrupt departments all at once, because I believe that if the department head is against corruption, then it will never occur," Duterte said in the vernacular.
The mayor said that he would soon review at random the files of every department and once he suspects an anomaly, he will request the Ombudsman to investigate.
Duterte started "cleansing" at the City Hall on July 29, with the revamp of the Business Bureau and the Local Civil Registrar offices where total of 71 plantilla and 62 contractual employees were affected.
On August 10, Duterte ordered the termination of 23 job order employees assigned with the slaughterhouse in Ma-a after he met with members of the Metro Davao Meat Vendors Association in Bankerohan.
Duterte was angered upon hearing the vendors reveal that it is a practice among slaughterhouse workers to demand one kilo of meat from every hog a vendor brings in to be slaughtered.
After hearing that, the mayor ordered the immediate closure of the abattoir.
He also asked City Economic Enterprise Head Roberto Teo to terminate the contractual employees and reassign the permanent employees citing their failure and negligence.
Teo said the average number of hogs slaughtered everyday is 300. If indeed the vendors were telling the truth, then slaughterhouse workers collected an average of 300 kilos of pork everyday.
Duterte started the series of revamps in reaction to the publicized results of a Social Weather Stations survey on governance identifying Davao City as having the most corrupt government employees.
However, the study did not specify where the corruption occurred--whether in the City Government or the regional offices of national agencies.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (August 15, 2005 issue)
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