On the surface, it’s understandable why 42 barangay officials affiliated with Team Rama were reluctant, even strongly opposed, to Acting Cebu City Mayor Margot Osmeña’s order to recall all city government-issued vehicles, including theirs, back to the South Road Properties (SRP).
With their patron gone, these barangay officials know that their days riding in comfort and convenience are over.
Unless their constituents come forward and testify how these officials used their city-issued vehicles, no one will know just how they used the city government property.
And it is a city government property no matter how cavalier they may have used it for their own purposes. It would be hard to believe that these vehicles were not used by barangay officials to transport family and friends to unofficial destinations and reasons.
In fact, it may even be used to fetch supporters during campaign sorties, a practice so common it had become accepted. And what about those rumors that Tisa barangay captain and Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) president Philip Zafra has three city-issued vehicles at his disposal?
These officials said the vehicles are used for emergencies, including transporting constituents to hospitals and even rescue operations and funeral services. They also argued that there is an annual inventory of vehicles done by the General Services Office which would account for their use.
These barangay officials cited the case of one of their own, Adlaon barangay chairman Elvis Narra, who figured in an accident a day after returning his city-issued vehicle for inventory at the SRP.
But we have to ask if these vehicles were covered by trip tickets as required by the Ombudsman concerning the use of government-issued vehicles. Every trip and every liter of gasoline loaded into these vehicles should be covered by documents such as trip tickets to fully ensure that they are not used for personal purposes.
Apparently they weren’t. And they were insistent that teams be sent instead to conduct an inventory of the vehicles rather than sending them to the SRP. But there’s no guarantee that the findings of these teams won’t be skewed in favor of these officials.
But we agree with the observation that the inventory should be done quickly and the vehicles returned or reassigned to others who need them more than the officials and their barangays.
Over half a billion pesos were spent by the Rama administration to buy vehicles supposedly for mobility of the local officials and other concerned agencies. That the acting mayor had to go to the police to file a complaint only highlights how low this dispute had deteriorated into.
Still, we hope the acting administration can justify to the city’s residents how they plan to conduct their own inventory of the city vehicles and have them issued to those barangays and offices that need them the most.
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