Fulfilling Tom’s promise: Cebu City to donate 15 vehicles to 8 barangays

These are part of the vehicles recalled by the Mayor Tomas Osmeña to the barangays for repairs. These vehicles would be donated back to the barangays. |CDN file photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Fifteen Cebu City-owned vehicles will be donated to eight barangays in the city before June 30 when outgoing Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s term would end.

Osmeña said that this was his way to keep his promise to donate these vehicles to the barangays before he would step down as mayor.

These 15 vehicles, the third batch of vehicles to be donated back to barangays, were among the vehicles recalled in March and April 2019 for maintenance and repair.

Read more: Osmeña: recall of vehicles is not a political move

Two vehicles will be donated to Barangays Cogon Pardo, Kalunasan, Buhisan, Duljo Fatima, and Pasil while three vehicles will be given to Barangay Labangon.

Barangays Guadalupe and Inayawan will also be receiving one vehicle each.

This will also be the second time that three Osmeña-allied barangays — Inayawan, Kalunasan, and Labangon to receive vehicles from the city.

Councilor Eugenio Gabuya Jr., the sponsor of the resolution for donation of the vehicles to the eight barangays, cited the size of these three barangays, which were larger than the others, as the reason they were given another donation of vehicles from the city government.

The City Council approved on Tuesday, June 11, the Deeds of Donation for the barangays who would be the recipients of the third set of vehicles.

After the donation is made, recipient barangays will already become custodians of these vehicles and will have to spend for its future upkeep.

The donated vehicles were part of the vehicle purchase that the city government made a few years ago. These were assigned to the barangays while the city continued to shoulder its gasoline expenses.

The first batch of vehicles was donated on May 21, 2019 to 24 barangays with a total of 42 newly repaired cars donated while in the second batch of donation the city gave out 16 newly repaired vehicles to 13 barangays on June 4.

Read more: 13 more Cebu City barangays to get share of donated vehicles from City Hall

Just like the second batch of donations, the third batch of donations did not receive any opposition from the minority bloc of the Council, Partido Barug, who are allies of the incoming administration of Mayor Edgardo Labella.

However, during the first set of donations, Partido Barug Councilors Joey Daluz and Pastor Alcover, Jr., questioned why Osmeña suddenly had the urge to donate the cars to the barangays when Labella already announced his plan to do the same when he would assume as the mayor of the city on July 1.

But Councilor Margarita Osmeña, Mayor Osmeña’s wife, said that Mayor Osmeña had already planned to donate the vehicles when he ordered their recall for repair.

Osmeña earlier promised that all barangays would receive donated vehicles, but there are still 38 barangays that had not yet receive any donated vehicles with just two weeks to go before the outgoing mayor would step down. /dbs