Burglars hit BI office

Thieves broke into the accounting office of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) in Intramuros, Manila before dawn last Friday, ransacking the room, and carting away slightly over P2,000 owned by the staff.

A statement from the bureau said Immigration Commissioner Alipio Fernandez Jr. has created a three-man fact-finding committee to investigate the incident.

In an interview with reporters, accounting office chief Gealicia Nunezca said the break-in was discovered by one of her staff members shortly before 7 a.m.

Nunezca said the office was practically turned inside out, with cabinets and drawers of her 22 staff members forced open and papers strewn everywhere.

Glass windows, including the one on the door leading to Nunezca’s office, was smashed by the burglars. They escaped through the window in her office.

The most the intruders got was P1,700 in cash left by one of the employees in a drawer, Nunezca said. Other staff members lost a few hundred pesos.

Nunezca stressed that while her office was still conducting an inventory of the documents and supplies, no records of the bureau’s transactions are missing.

The last break-in into the accounting office was in 1988, when Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago was the immigration commissioner. – Nikko Dizon