Last Thursday, whistle-blower Rey Kabigting filed his leave of absence after alleged mounting pressure from fellow employees for him to keep silent.
Kabigting told The STAR he was the one who furnished the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) with a videotape showing several of his co-workers pilfering items from letters sent from abroad to local folk.
The videotape was largely the basis of an NBI intelligence report identifying at least six postal employees allegedly involved in anomalies at the PPC’s Balibago office.
The report identified two of the employees as Danilo Salunga and Mario Mercado who were caught on video actually opening some letters and pocketing their contents.
A resident, who asked not to be named, said that since l987, scores of local folk have been complaining of missing cash, checks or even small pieces of jewelry sent from abroad through mail.
Kabigting recalled that some of his fellow workers began harassing him last year when they suspected him of squealing about mounting complaints to PPC officials in Barangay San Nicolas.
"My desk was moved to a location exposed to the heat of the sun," he said.
The last straw, however, came last Wednesday when he received a memorandum from his superiors transferring him, without any explanation, to the PPC’s San Nicolas office.
"It was clearly an attempt to harass me," he said.
Kabigting said he secretly videotaped the anomalies at the Balibago office for successive days in the first week of March. He said he still has the master videotape, a copy of which he provided the NBI.