Dumaguete Council probes into rotting relief goods

CEBU, Philippines - Donated food items and other perishable materials for victims of calamities have been found rotting inside the room of the Dumaguete Social Welfare Office, and were even allegedly disposed without proper documentation and despite their condition.

The Dumaguete City Council was alarmed over the discovery of the rotting relief goods. It then summoned to appear in Wednesday’s regular session city Social Welfare Officer Carola Alquero, and Raquel Palencia—who was in charge of the storage— to shed light on the reported spoilage of the items, including exposed mineral water, which were buried at the dumpsite only lately.

Councilor Manny Arbon said the City Council wanted to get to the bottom of this issue to be able to establish a policy of transparency on handling donations for victims of calamities.

Arbon said donated items should not be stored inside the DSWD building but in any warehouse that the city government will lease to prevent these goods from being spoiled and rotten and exposed to rats and leaking ceiling.

The City Council grilled Palencia and Alquero for more than an hour to get confirmation about reports they were dumping the spoiled items in the dumpsite, which the two in turn had denied.

Palencia, however, admitted that on her own judgment some of the items were already rotten so she requested the City Engineer’s Office to clean up the SWO’s conference room where the stocks were stored, but they did it without conducting an inventory first.

Councilors Alan Gel Cordova, Lilani Ramon and Joe Kenneth Arbas reacted by warning Palencia that what she did bordered on malversation.  

Councilor Estanislao Alviola, for his part, commented that the government can always request suppliers for a temporary storage of their perishable items, even for a fee, citing a similar situation in Roxas City and Iloilo in Western Visayas.

Cordova said that, as a matter of policy, everything should be documented especially when it comes to handling and disposal of government property. “If possible, recipients of calamity items should be documented otherwise, employees concerned are open to a lot of unwanted issues,” he said.

Cordova and Alviola said they could not understand why the SWO waited for the items to get spoiled when these were badly needed by the indigent recipients. They said they can consider for the sacks of rice but not about the sardines to be left to rot.

SWD officer Alquero, for her part, admitted that when she assumed office as officer-in-charge in 2012 she had requested Councilor Ramon for 10 big pails to transfer the stocks of rice and other perishable items and has requested the previous mayor to acquire a sea-van to be used as storage facility, but these never came.

Arbas wanted a full-blown investigation on the matter, saying that disposing the spoiled items, without prior documentation, can be considered a criminal act.

The person involved maybe asked by COA for an inventory of the missing items in the absence of documents like pictures to prove that they were disposed due to being rotten while in storage. “This is not an ordinary negligence but serious negligence and responsible employees and offices should be held accountable,” Arbas said.  (FREEMAN)