THE Negros Occidental provincial government will look for funds to cover its fertilizer program of which the priority will be those local government units that did not receive theirs from the Department of Agriculture because of the missing fertilizers, Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson said Monday, July 3.
The missing 789 bags of fertilizers worth P2.3 million was from the Department of Agriculture.
The missing fertilizers were discovered in October 2022 when the municipality of Cauayan was supposed to get its share.
Meanwhile, Lacson said the issue may have been one of the causes why Edmundo Raul Causing resigned as provincial agriculturist effective August 1.
Dina Gensola will be the acting OPA head.
Lacson said the case, which involved two Capitol employees, is under investigation by the Provincial Legal Office.
Lacson said that "command responsibility is more of a moral issue."
"The case has really affected him also when he found out there were missing fertilizers," he said.
He believes that the incident of the missing fertilizers "could have contributed to his resignation."
"Aside from affecting his health morally he felt that morally it happened under his watch. It's possible that it convinced him to resign," he also said.
Lacson said Causing has a heart ailment.
“We warned him about the performance of OPA. He wanted to give it a try and help the provincial government. But he later admitted that there is great stress," the governor said.
Meanwhile, of the two employees, Lacson said the casual employee will not be renewed as his contract ended on June 2 this year while the regular employee was “still given an opportunity to defend himself, otherwise, we will base our decision on the signature that appears in the receiving forms,” the governor said.
"They have to admit that somebody told them to do it. In the absence of that, it is really based on hard evidence - it is really the signature on the receiving form. They are given all the opportunity to defend themselves and they are not saying anything," Lacson pointed out.
"There is no record of who released it. But we cannot make a presumption on who's at fault," he added.*