I just came from a breakfast presentation yesterday morning by Mr. Christian Arno, CEO of Lingo24 the latest foreign (doing global language translation) investor in Cebu City at the Radisson Blu together with Mayor Michael Rama when, as soon as I got into my car and turned on my radio, I heard that a bloody armed robbery just took place at the Robinson’s Foodcourt in Fuente Osmeña. So instead of proceeding to my office, I huffed over the front door of Robinsons and a huge crowd of on-lookers were already there surrounding the armored van along the side of the road in Fuente Osmeña.
From the story I gathered, armed men followed a China Bank employee with a security guard inside the Foodcourt area and as they came out with the bag of (initial reports say they carried P1.2 million) money, the robbers fired shots at them, wounding the bank employee and the security guard with him. As the shots were heard, the armored car security guard, Jufel Etac, armed with a shotgun outside the main door, was suddenly shot by the lookouts poised near the Foodcourt’s main gate, killing him instantly.
Call it lucky that a police patrol was cruising the area when they heard the shots… and a hot pursuit ensued, where two responding policemen were also shot and wounded in the gunfight. During the hot pursuit operations, the responding PNP teams blocked one of the robbers on board his motorcycle along V. Ranudo St. just off Casino Español and he was shot and killed, while the other was caught fleeing in Alcohol St. where after a short gunfight, he too was shot and gravely wounded and died in the hospital. It was indeed a bloody Monday morning, where three robbery suspects and one security guard were killed and four persons wounded in the gunfight.
Call me lucky that as I got into the crime scene, the first police officer I met was Senior Supt. Melvin Ramon “Omar” Buenafe, head of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) and I personally congratulated him for the quickest response from Cebu’s Finest that I have seen in recent memory. Senior Supt. Buenafe intimated to me that last week, they got an intelligence report that a group of robbers from Ozamiz had arrived in Cebu.
So last Saturday, the CCPO did what you would call a “dry run” on how the police would react to scenarios like an armed robbery. That “dry run” gave the Cebu City Police a short refresher course on quick response, which they followed to the letter yesterday morning.
We’re not happy that this bloody incident happened in Fuente Osmeña, in the heart of Cebu City, and resulted in the death of the poor security guard and the three robbers. But while we congratulate the CCPO for a job well-done for their quick response to this robbery, there are still many unanswered questions that need to be looked into. One is whether or not there were only three armed robbers or where there more of them? The other is whether there are other armed groups also from Ozamiz who might be emboldened to do their thing, but this time kills their intended victims.
Of course, the news of this ill-fated robbery might just scare off these armed robbers that the police in Cebu City are on the alert that if they pulled a robbery, they might end up going back to Ozamiz in a body bag. Again congratulations to the CCPO for this very quick response to this incident. We can only hope that this sends a message to all criminals that they are not welcome in the City of Cebu.
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Yesterday’s headline news in The FREEMAN revealed that Division for the Welfare of the Urban Poor (DWUP) head Collin Russell will soon recommend to the Cebu City Council to impose a one-half percent Socialized Housing Tax (SHT) as mandated by section 43 of Republic Act. No. 7279, suggesting further that this will be for property owners having an assessed value of more than P50,000, which practically means every land owner!
Now before our friends in the Cebu City Council start studying this provision from R.A. no.7279, they must first consider the implications that imposing new taxes would cause in Cebu City. For one, Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III is now President of this country and one of his campaign promises was “no new taxes,” a promise that he has kept until now.
I’m against this idea simply because we do not have a federal system of governance, but a centralized system, which means there is the National Housing Authority (NHA) that does this for the entire nation with funds taken from our taxes. Hence one could say that imposing such a tax may result in double taxation. Sure it is written in Sec. 43 of R.A. 7279, but if some one files a case against its constitutionality, the City of Cebu may just lose this case. Mind you, that socialized housing program doesn’t only solve the housing problems of homeless, Cebuanos, but also of the poor people from the Visayas and Mindanao who come to Cebu and live here as squatters.
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Email: vsbobita@mozcom.com