Mayor of Yolanda-hit town faces plunder raps

MANILA, Philippines – The mayor of the town where Super Typhoon Yolanda made landfall on Nov. 8, 2013 is facing a plunder case in connection with the alleged overpricing of barangay halls and day care centers funded out of typhoon rehabilitation funds.

Charged before the Office of the Ombudsman was Mayor Christopher Sheen Gonzales of Guiuan, Eastern Samar; municipal engineer Arsenio Salamida; Department of the Interior and Local Government regional director Pedro Noval Jr. and Vicente Leo Gonzales and Mark Pol Gonzales, the mayor’s brothers.

The complainants are Kiriath Jearm Andrie Tumanda and Avelino Balagbis Jr., residents of Guiuan and members of the Lapian ng Mga Responsableng Anak ng Guiuan.

Aside from committing plunder, the two accused their town mayor, Noval, Salamida and the mayor’s two brothers of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and the Government Procurement Reform Act.

In their complaint, Tumanda and Balagbis said their municipal government undertook the repair and rehabilitation of 89 barangay halls and day care centers worth P152,991,315 in 2014, months after Yolanda struck their town.

They said based on the cost estimate of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the projects should have cost taxpayers only P41,143,872.

The overprice thus amounted to P111,847,443, they said.

They added that it was Noval who released the funds to the municipal government of Guiuan through a memorandum of agreement without verifying the program of work and cost of construction, materials and labor.

The complainants pointed out that the barangay halls and day care centers had a uniform floor area of 28 square meters, but the funding Mayor Gonzales requested and which Noval approved ranged from P1 million to P2.5 million.

They stressed that the DPWH built a new one-story classroom in Barangay Cantahay at a cost of only P16,698 per square meter, while the municipal government constructed a similar classroom at P68,571 per square meter.

For some barangay halls and day care centers, the average building cost was even higher, Tumanda and Balagbis said.

For instance, the construction cost for the community hall in Barangay Pagbabangnan averaged P89,285.71 per square meter and P85,714.29 for the same hall in Barangay Lupok, they said.

The barangay structures “are very much overpriced, even more expensive than the controversial Makati parking building, put up at an average cost of P42,000 per square meter,” they said.

The two claimed that the mayor’s two brothers supplied most of the materials and labor, while Salamida approved the program of work, including construction cost.