Cuenco denies role in fertilizer fund scam

CEBU CITY — Cebu City south district Rep. Antonio Cuenco denied involvement in the fertilizer fund scam, while the mayor of Aloguinsan town said the agriculture department did not coordinate with her office on the distribution of fertilizers.

Cuenco, in a press conference in his residence the other day, said his district office was not involved even if some barangays in his district were found to have received the fertilizers.

Cuenco said he wanted to clear his name from insinuations that he pocketed part of the fertilizer fund, adding that the distribution of the fertilizers was not coordinated with his office.

He said his district office’s personnel were not present when fertilizers were distributed in Barangay Pamutan, as earlier claimed.

He, however, admitted that his staff visited the barangay but only to inspect the ongoing construction of a sports complex there.

Cuenco said he welcomes the ongoing investigation by the Senate and the Ombudsman because it will eventually clear his name.

He further denied knowing about Kasosyo Foundation Inc., a non-governmental organization, which served as the Department of Agriculture’s conduit in the controversial distribution.

Aloguinsan Mayor Cynthia Moreno, for her part, told radio station dyLA that if the DA was behind the fertilizer distribution, then it should have coordinated with her office.

The other supposed beneficiary town in the third district is Asturias.

Since Friday, Moreno surveyed and inspected her town’s farmers who were among the reported beneficiaries of the fertilizers.

There are only 16 rice farmers in her barangay, and she learned that only a few of them each received one liter of liquid fertilizer.

Moreno said she wanted to know all the details behind the distribution and has yet to identify the people who gave out the fertilizers.

She said there have been reports that the liquid fertilizers were hastily distributed to some farmers in her town who, however, were not taught how to properly use them.

She added that the farmers could not even use the fertilizers at all because they were not given sprayers.

Cebu City councilor Edgardo Labella has filed a resolution asking the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas to act with dispatch over the DA’s reported release to the city’s south district of a P3-million fund intended for the hybrid rice commercialization program but which turned out to have been used for the fertilizer distribution.

Labella, himself a former director of the Ombudsman’s office, said a no-nonsense investigation must be conducted to pin down the people behind the anomaly. — Jose Sollano, Cristina Birondo and Garry Lao/ Freeman News Service