Tigbauan councilors join ex-mayor's son in graft raps filed over 'ghost projects'
Five municipal councilors in Tigbauan, Iloilo officially joined the fray generated by the alleged "ghost projects" here following the re-filing of criminal and administrative complaint against Mayor Myrna Torres.
Lodged before the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas through the deputized anti-graft body, People's Graftwatch of Iloilo, the town executives were also former allies of the lady mayor.
As such, Councilors Roel Jarina, Alfonso Babiera, Romeo Ledesma, Orvillo Tangente (Liga President) and Jose Donel Trasporto (Sangguniang Kabataan President) will face-off with Mayor Torres as co-complainants of businessman Winfred Ledesma, son of the town's former mayor.
The group in calling for Ombudsman action executed a joint affidavit charging Mayor Torres for what they termed "are cases of highly irregular, highly anomalous and highly questionable government infrastructure projects funded from the town's coffers."
"That Mayor Myrna Torres in her capacity as chief executive of Tigbauan acted in bad faith and caused undue disadvantage to the government in pushing for the payment of the three "ghost projects," excerpts of the document obtained by The News Today (TNT) stated.
The complaint stemmed from three questioned projects in Tigbauan namely the construction of concrete fence at the public market, construction of concrete fence at Trompeta Drive and construction of concrete fence at the town's slaughterhouse.
Each similarly valued P153,860 or a total of P461,580, documents to back up the transactions were discovered by the group and ultimately, by government auditors to have showed blatant irregularities.
For instance, COA in its audit called the mayor's attention as to why materials were purchased way ahead of the project's official start. Interestingly enough too, the supplier of said materials came from a local hardware store that eventually was awarded the project, ending up as the supposed winning bidder.
Further still, COA questioned the identical programs of works including amounts, labor and material components. Accompanying vouchers and other official paper works were also unnumbered and undated yet the transactions were approved and ultimately approved for payment. The group also told the Ombudsman that no such actual concrete fence construction took place. Even the names of the supposed laborers were labeled "fictitious" that had the workers claiming wages for the three projects supposedly done all at the same time in three separate places.
The 'ghost projects' with the 'super pandays (carpenters)' caused the Tigbauan Municipal Council to conduct an investigation however such was hampered due to an Executive Order issued by Mayor Torres ordering respondent employees and town officials not to attend the probe.
"The execution of the project was done ahead of the procurement of materials which clearly indicates that the irregularities in the procurement transaction were material with inconsistencies highly technical," the COA then wrote.
"We are pursuing this if only to seek redress to our long-standing legitimate grievances particularly on the hundreds of thousands, millions even, of government funds that we believe have been blatantly mis-used in Tigbauan," the group in a joint statement added.
Ombudsman action is expected to establish and find out if prima facie evidence is present on the complaint as filed based on the supporting documents submitted by the complainant-officials and former mayor's son.