BY HERBERT VEGO
ILOILO City — “Si Mayor siguro maka-order kay Fullon kag kay Dinopol para ipagua ang listahan.”
With those exact words, Rex Donasco – president of the Iloilo City Market Vendors Association – appealed to Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog to prevail upon city legal counsel Atty. Daniel Dinopol and Councilor Rodel Fullon Agado to reveal the names of city hall officials who had pocketed collections from seven public markets.
Donasco was yesterday’s guest of the talk show Reklamo Publiko on DyOK Aksyon Radyo-Iloilo hosted by Panay News editor-in-chief Danny Fajardo.
Agado, a very critical radio commentator until he was elected councilor last year, had referred to an unnamed tuklo as the mastermind behind the theft of hundreds of thousands of pesos that had not reached the City Treasurer’s Office.
Dinopol, on the other hand, had admitted having the list of suspects behind the heist. Like Agado, however, he would not reveal who are in the list.
Donasco took it to mean that the two would only declassify the list upon the mayor’s order.
The mayor and the city council have agreed to turn over the management of the central market to SM Prime Holdings, Inc. as a way of aborting further losses arising from collected but unremitted fees from stall occupants and transient vendors.
Donasco and most other stall occupants are not in favor of the said “solution” for fear that it would dislocate them.
There are around 300 stall holders at the central market and around 700 transient vendors for a total of 1,000.
Donasco alleged that based on the terms of reference presented by SM Prime Holdings, the latter would have full control of the central market which would be redesigned into a four-building, four-storey complex.
Conversely, Mabilog, on the other hand, had earlier assured vendors that they would retain their posts.
Donasco said that since no public consultation had ever taken place before an alleged bidding was held with SM Prime Holdings as the lone bidder, the vendors had been left in the dark about the true picture.
“It’s not our fault,” Donasco said, referring to himself and other vendors, “that city hall does not get the fees we pay to the collectors.”
Based on his computation, the seven public markets in Iloilo City made P14 million in the previous year, 2013, from vendors’ stall fees and transients’ arkabala.
Donasco cited the amount of P600,000 as “missing” from the coffers of the Local Economic Enterprise Office (LEEO), which was then headed by Vincent de la Cruz.
Mayor Mabilog terminated de la Cruz from that position due to unspecified “anomalies” in February this year, replacing him with City Administrator Norlito Bautista in concurrent capacity, in the wake of the murder of a certain Frances Lei Reyes outside Robinsons Place Iloilo on January 27, 2014.
The lone suspect in the gun-slaying, Enrico Robles Jr., was a job hire and subordinate of de la Cruz at LEEO. He remains at large.
De la Cruz has never faced the Iloilo media for whatever information he could provide on his dismissal./PN
