TWO Yanson siblings belonging to the “Fantastic Four” complained Tuesday, August 13, that they, along with about 300 employees, were not allowed entry at the main office of Vallacar Transit, Inc. (VTI) in Purok Himaya, Barangay Mansilingan, Bacolod City.
Ma. Lourdes Celina Yanson Lopez and Emily Yanson personally appeared before the Police Station 7 and have their complaints of not being allowed entry recorded Tuesday.
“We are the owners but we are not allowed to get inside that’s why we are questioning it because it’s our property and besides I am also working inside,” Celina said.
“I went to the office yesterday but the guards belonging to AGN Security Agency did not allow me to go inside. I was supposed to report to work. I work inside the compound being the Corporate Finance Officer of VTI. They don’t allow us to come inside because they said that they have the order from Leo Rey,” Celina further said.
She also revealed that only employees who were issued with orange IDs were allowed inside.
The employees she said who were supposed to come inside the main office are workers at the shop inside the compound.
“They are working there so that’s why they were not able to change their IDs from the old one to the orange one which was issued at the North Terminal,” she said.
She added that some employees who were allowed entry earlier are also claiming that they were required to surrender their mobile phones at the gate. They were also asked to sign blank documents and were made to write their names and signatures on the logbook. Some employees were also made to wait at the bus and were interrogated before they were allowed entry. “It looks like they are in a jail”, she said.
Celina said that she will try again to report for her work on Wednesday.
Asked for her message to Leo Rey, Celina said, “You should be human enough so that you could feel for the employees who were not allowed to enter. They should be allowed to report back to work because many of them are already second or third generation employees.”
In a press conference Tuesday, Gerry Llena, one of the lawyers of Leo Rey explained that the instruction of his client is for the safety of the employees who are on their side.
“Let’s not fuel the emotions which are still high up to now to avoid another tension from happening. Leo Rey has a deep concern for his employees. This is due to intel reports that there will be surprises inside and truth to tell there were recoveries of Molotov bombs. The place is too huge and if those employees who cannot be controlled are allowed entry, their safety may also be compromised which is also our concern. That’s why we have to sweep the entire area for physical control and it will require time. LRY is asking the employees to bear with the situation because this is also for their safety and for everything to be back to normal. It’s very obvious that the situation is not yet normal but were leading to that. We’re doing a double time,” he said.
Llena also said, “We have to start from scratch especially that files were missing and it will take time to reconcile and reconstruct the records.”
Orange IDs were issued for control purposes to avoid tension from happening again. The tension is still high especially when we learned about the presence of Emily and Celina. We hope that we will not fuel emotions again to avoid tension. We want to normalize as soon as possible for our riding public,” he added.
He also assured that once everything will normalize they will be allowed entry because the employees are LRYs concern especially that he is aware that they are innocent and just wanted their jobs.
However he said, he can’t tell how many days it will take to sweep every nook and corner of the Ceres compound.