Ombudsman suspends Cebu port manager

CEBU — The Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas has ordered the suspension of the general manager of the Cebu Port Authority (CPA) for 60 days without pay.

Deputy Ombudsman for Visayas Primo Miro directed Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza or Cebu Port Commission alternate chairman Oscar Sevilla to immediately implement the preventive suspension of CPA general manager Mariano C.J. Martinez upon receipt of the order.

Miro required Mendoza and Sevilla to notify the Ombudsman, within five days thereafter, on the status of the suspension.

Martinez admitted receiving a copy of the order, but said, "I will just let my lawyers comment on that. It is still premature to make any comment."

The Ombudsman found substantial evidence to suspend Martinez in the wake of an administrative complaint the CPA union, through its president Jesse Guillermo, has filed against him.

The CPA union accused Martinez of at least 11 acts of grave misconduct. But graft investigator Venerando Ralph Santiago found only three of the allegations were substantiated.

One of them is the alleged use of CPA personnel to work on the improvements of Martinez’s ancestral house in Lahug.

The two others are the alleged use of a CPA vehicle in fetching Martinez’s daughter to and from school, and the alleged use of CPA funds to pay the withholding taxes on the employees’ benefits even if these were not yet released.

Santiago said CPA employee Zosimo Pero Jr. issued an affidavit saying that Martinez allegedly ordered him to fix, install or repair the plumbing fixtures in the latter’s house.

Some CPA drivers also alleged that Martinez ordered them, as part of their duties, to take his daughter to and from school using the agency’s Toyota Revo with license plate GMC 990. — Freeman News Service