Cebu City Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella asks Cebu City government employees to pray for lawyer Remelio Delute, who filed a complaint against city officials who received the P20,000 calamity assistance. (Cebu City Information Office Facebook Photo)
The Cebu City Council is divided on whether or not to return the P20,000 calamity relief assistance each member received last December.
Councilors Alvin Dizon, Roberto Cabarrubias and Eugenio Gabuya returned their share to the Office of the City Treasurer last week.
Councilor Nida Cabrera, who left for an official trip to Germany yesterday, said in a text message to Cebu Daily News that she was prepared to do the same, after a complaint filed against city officials with the Office of the President stirred negative public reaction.
“I’m willing to return it. I will ask my staff to do it,” she said. But Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella and Councilors Gerry Carillo and Dave Tumulak said they don’t see any need to hand the amount back.
Without malice
“Until such time that there is a Commission on Audit (COA) disallowance, there is no basis for us to return the money,” Carillo said in a radio interview.
Labella said he’s worried that when Dizon, Cabarrubias and Gabuya returned the money, the case they will present to the Office of the President may be weakened “but I cannot also tell them (the three councilors) what to do.”
“I never entertain thoughts of strained relations (among council members). I don’t want to take it (the return of the calamity assistance) against anyone especially if they did it without malice or ill motives,” he said.
Labella said he was surprised that the three councilors returned their share of the calamity assistance because they never mentioned plans to do so in meetings held last week to draft their reply to lawyer Remelio Delute’s complaint.
Dizon only sent him a text message on Thursday to tell him that he had returned his P20,000.
Adverse reactions
Dizon also said in his text message that he would still want to take part in the joint reply that the City Council is preparing.
Officials who include Mayor Michael Rama, Labella and 12 councilors are preparing their replies to the administrative complaint filed against them by Delute.
Dizon and Cabarrubias said they decided to return the money because of adverse public reactions and the “cloud of doubt” over the validity of its release.
Carillo said if the Cebu City government allocated millions of pesos to help Yolanda victims, there’s no reason why they cannot allocate calamity assistance for their employees.
“I myself am a qualified calamity victim because I lost my crops in Bogo (City) and our ancestral land (to typhoon Yolanda),” Cabrera said. But she said she won’t mind returning the P20,000.
Labella said he already used his share of the assistance to create a “pay-it-forward ripple effect”.
He divided his P20,000 cash among residents of barangays Mabolo and Malubog whose houses were damaged by supertyphoon Yolanda.
“I was thinking that by receiving it, I would be able to create a pay-it-forward ripple effect and reach more people. I’m okay since the roof of my house was not blown away by the typhoon,” the vice mayor said.
Related Stories:
3 Cebu city councilors return P20,000 calamity aid