SC dismisses employee of Tagbilaran City court

The Supreme Court has ordered the dismissal from service of a female employee of a Regional Trial Court in Tagbilaran City for stealing her fellow worker’s check of P1,223 and used it to purchase grocery products for her family.

Chief Justice Reynato Puno also ordered for the forfeiture of retirement benefits the employee, Carina Divinagracia Lagura, is supposed to receive.

The High Tribunal decided to rule on the case, without Lagura’s side, because she refused to answer the charges filed against her despite several orders from the Office of the Court Administrator.

Failure to answer the charges was deemed as an admission of guilt to the charges, said the Supreme Court. “It is an admission by silence which may be given in evidence against her pursuant to Section 32 of Rule 130 of the Revised Rules of Court,” it said in its decision.

Lagura has already admitted her guilt before the Tagbilaran City Prosecutors’ Office, court records showed. She also offered to resigned from her work if the complainant, Lydia Faelden, withdraws the criminal case against her.

The Supreme Court ruled that Lagura, for stealing and encashing the complainant’s check, blatantly degraded the judiciary and diminished the respect and regard of the people for the court and its personnel.

Puno, for his part, said that every employee of the judiciary should be an example of integrity, morality and honesty.

Like any public servant, Lagura must also show the highest sense of trustworthiness and rectitude in all her dealings, personal or public, to preserve the the court’s good name and standing as a true temple of justice, Puno said. — Rene U. Borromeo/RAE