Indeed! How was the road user's tax spent?

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago fired double barrels at Rodolfo “Dodie” Puno, head of the Road Board and its five members for the alleged unaccounted P60.5 billion collected since year 2001 from the so-called “Road User’s Tax”. Now the Senate has okayed plunder charges to be filed not just against Puno, but DPWH Sec. Hermogenes Ebdane. I fully agree that former Sec. Ebdane and Mr. Puno should give an accounting of the Road User’s Tax to the Filipino people. Vehicle owners need to know where our taxes went, especially here in Cebu City where three years after our hosting of the 12th ASEAN Summit, our roads have become so full of potholes, it is embarrassing to our foreign tourists.

What I heard about how the Road User’s Tax was spent was that, this was partly given as Pork Barrel to all Congressmen for their own infrastructure needs? Is this true? Of course Sen. Santiago believes that these monies have been “plundered” by Ebdane and Puno. However, Puno welcomes this investigation so that the truth will come out. So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. But we don’t see our share of the Road User’s tax being spent here in Cebu City. As for Ebdane, his running for President just might be a smoke screen to “hide” his alleged ill-gotten wealth.

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Call it a first, but as The Philippine Star reported last Monday, Petron Corporation, one of the so-called Big Three oil companies serving this country has urged the government to examine their books in order to put an end to the speculation that it is overpricing. This challenge was posed by Petron President Eric Recto to the Task Force under the Department of Energy (DoE) and Department of Justice (DoJ) as a way of showing their transparency and fairness to their consumers.

The DOE/DOJ Task Force should accept this challenge once and for all in order to put this issue to rest. We in Cebu have our own vested interest in looking at their books, because everyone here has to pay an average of P5 to P6 per liter vis-à-vis the fuel prices in some parts of the Visayas and Mindanao and most especially in Luzon. This is something that the Cebu Business organizations have been asking the President since March. We shouldn’t waste the golden opportunity being presented to us so we would really know why we Cebuanos have to pay higher fuel cost.

Right now, the Task Force DOE/DOJ have gone to court against the Big Three Oil companies, but with this development, I’m sure it would speed up the process. The case filed against the Big Three oil companies is a criminal case for cartelization or collusion, which can be proven only by opening the books of the oil companies. So, will DoE Secretary Angelo Reyes do the job that he is paid to do?

Meanwhile, the breaking news is that Sec. Reyes has appealed to the Arroyo Government to lift the oil freeze order as the Big Three Oil companies told him that the oil supply would last only for 13 days. Should we believe the Oil Companies or risk having fuel shortages? Abangan!

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For those like me who have been users of Nokia cellphones for more than ten years, I just got this report from Nokia in Finland, that it is initiating a charger exchange program, wherein certain consumers who own a Nokia-branded charger that was manufactured by a third-party supplier are being asked to exchange these chargers for free replacements.

Apparently, during a routine quality control check, Nokia technicians found and identified that the plastic covers of these affected chargers would come loose and expose the charger’s internal components and potentially pose electrical hazard. The Nokia communiqué identified a limited number of chargers of model types manufactured a single third-party supplier during a specific time period within the scope of the exchange program.

Nokia identified these chargers as models AC-3E and AC-3U that were manufactured between June 15, 2009 and Aug.9, 2009 and AC-4U model that was manufactured between April 13, 2009 and Oct.25, 2009. Look at your Nokia chargers if the model numbers fit what we’ve noted here.

For more information especially on how consumers can check to see if their chargers are part of this exchange or recall program, Nokia has set up a website for this program. Visit http://chargerexchange.nokia.com or send an SMS with the following format “charger model, manufacturer name, 26 digit charger serial number” to 0905-322-4923 for Globe subscribers or 0920-267-8978 for Smart subscribers or 0922-858-9360 for Sun subscribers or they can call the Nokia Careline at (632) 886-1234 between 8:30am-8:30pm from Mondays to Sundays.

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