By MAE SINGUAY
BACOLOD City — Where is the business permit of the city slaughterhouse operator here? Is the City Legal Office (CLO) hiding it?
AVM Bernardo Engineering’s plant site manager Glorydee Cometa and counsel Atty. Marvin Tañada went looking for the permit yesterday but failed to find it.
Tañada on Thursday said they received only a photocopy of the permit because the original copy was deposited by the city government to the court.
He said the city had claimed to have attached the business permit to its comment on the petition for mandamus that AVM earlier filed against it.
Yesterday morning, Tañada and Cometa went to Regional Trial Court Branch 54 to get the original copy, to no avail.
It turned out that the court refused to receive the business permit, saying the city government must give it directly to AVM, said Tañada.
Tañada and Cometa then went to the Permits and Licensing Division (PLD) at the People’s House, but a division staffer told them that they have no such permit.
They went back to the division in the afternoon to talk to Marie Ann Biasca, PLD acting head.
Biasca confirmed that a business permit has already been issued for AVM but her division handed it to the CLO, headed by Atty. Rayfrando Diaz.
She said the PLD must be the one releasing business permits, but AVM’s case was different.
According to Tañada, Biasca turned over the permit to Diaz because the CLO told her it will be deposited to the court.
Biasca promised to ask Diaz regarding the permit, Tañada said, adding that he himself will talk to Diaz, too.
Tañada on Thursday said they were considering filing a motion to dismiss the petition for mandamus, but after what they went through yesterday, he said they will let the court decide on the petition.
Diaz earlier said the petition for mandamus was rendered moot and academic by the release of the business permit.
In its petition, AVM asked the court to compel the city government to release its business permit, and demanded P200,000 for moral damages and P50,000 for exemplary damages.
AVM had lamented that the city “remained adamant” in releasing its permit despite its compliance with all the requirements.
It also demanded from the city P60,000 as attorney’s fee, plus P3,000 for every court appearance of its lawyer, P20,000 for litigation expenses./PN
