THE Davao City Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday, December 29, conducted a simple send-off program for incoming Prosecutor General Victor Sepulveda who will soon be assigned to the national office.
City Prosecutor Nestor Ledesma said Sepulveda's appointment is historic as he is the first Mindanaoan ever to be selected for the post, adding that before, the Prosecutor General seemed to be a “distant star” especially for the elite.
As a fellow Davao City Prosecutor, Ledesma said he is excited with the development and hoped that with Sepulveda now in position, much attention will be given to address the funding needs of the Prosecution Office.
"We are excited and we are happy because our concerns will now be promptly addressed, hopefully," Ledesma said.
Some of the concerns Ledesma will raise to Sepulveda is the need of computers to hasten the modernization of their office.
Sepulveda, meanwhile, will also bring with him two prosecutors, Prosecutor Jay Karel Sanchez, and Prosecutor Peter Paul Tombo, which will leave the City Prosector’s Office with 25 prosecutors.
Prosecutor Oliver Saniel has been designated as the officer-in-charge of the Mati City Prosecutor’s Office.
rLedesma, however, said he personally thinks that though prosecutors will be hard-pressed with the quota, he is positive that their office will manage with the number of prosecutors.
Ledesma already instructed all the prosecutors to ensure that they will have zero backlog for the month of December, which means they should have resolved regularly filed cases.
"Isiguro na walay backlog, it means wala kay more than 60 days (They should make sure that they will have no backlog in cases that should be resolved within 60 days)," he said.
Ledesma said their office has more than 90 percent rate of disposition of cases and they are hopeful that they will maintain their record.
Summing up the whole year, Ledesma said it has been a good year for their office since they were able to significantly contribute to the over-all success of the Regional Prosecutor’s Office, which ranked second among best performing regions in terms of speedy disposition of cases.
Davao City Prosecutor’s office resolved the bulk of cases within the region, having a 60 percent share of all the cases filed all over the region while the other 40 percent are distributed to the other prosecution offices scattered all over the region, Ledesma added.