Over road projects: Barangay chief files complaint against Ginatilan mayor

CEBU, Philippines – A barangay captain of Ginatilan town filed an administrative complaint against Mayor Dean Michael Singco before the Cebu Provincial Board for abuse of authority, oppression and grave misconduct.

Poblacion barangay captain Femma Duterte accused Singco of trying to delay four barangay road projects by pulling out some materials needed for road concreting.

The Office of the Governor initiated a funding for concreting of barangay roads in Anao, Cagsing, Looc and Poblacion through a counter-parting scheme.

Last month, Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia and Singco executed a memorandum of agreement on the implementation of the road projects.

Under the MOA, the provincial government will provide cement for the concreting while the municipal government will provide sand and gravel, concrete mixer, vibrator, deformed bars and other materials.

For its part, the barangay will provide the manpower.

According to Duterte, the barangay council passed a resolution hiring the services of Engineer Reynaldo Dinglasa as foreman of the project.

With the sand and gravel committed by the municipality, Singco reportedly instructed the barangay to get the supply from the stockpile of the town.

The barangay, which implemented the project in sitio Mini, was able to haul sand and gravel from the municipal stockpile.

But on January 13, Duterte said that Singco “is planning to pull out the sand and gravel after knowing that the barangay contracted the services of Dinglasa.”

Duterte said she went to the mayor’s office and was informed to “replace our foreman” as there were others who could do the job otherwise the municipal government will pull out the materials.

“I insisted that we keep our foreman, the mayor was adamant,” Duterte said.

Dinglasa is reportedly the elder brother of Clarito Dinglasa, the former mayor and vice mayor of the town. Clarito run for mayor in the last May 2007 election but lost to Singco.

“The mayor sent municipal dump trucks on January 17, 2009 to retrieve the sand and gravel without even courtesy of official notice to the barangay officials prior to the actual pull out. It was critical at that time because the workers were scheduled to do the pouring of cement,” Duterte’s complaint stated.

But despite the pulling out of materials, Duterte said the barangay continued the concreting project, which was completed on January 31.

The pulling out of construction materials “had caused injury to the barangay because it was forced to spend its own funds that could have been otherwise used for some other equally important development projects,” the complaint added.

Duterte is asking the Provincial Board to immediately investigate Singco.

The barangay captain also asked for the mayor’s suspension while the investigation is ongoing. — Garry B. Lao/LPM (THE FREEMAN)