EDITORIAL — Where did the money go?

With the van-for-hire terminal in Barangay Kamagayan in Cebu City gone, it seems people are only now noticing the anomalies.

In particular, who has been collecting the lucrative ?200 per trip for every v-hire using the terminal, and estimated by City Administrator Collin Rosell to be at least ?60 million based on the two years that the terminal was operating.

And because the drivers don’t seem to want to talk, are too afraid to do so, or have no idea at all who they paid, the city plans to ask the National Bureau of Investigation to get to the bottom of it.

“Naay NBI…ihatag nato na’s NBI, if needed be…But I haven’t contacted NBI yet…Wala pa…But NBI  aron g’yud fair…lisud man na’g dili ta mo-fair…fair g’yud…We mean business... ang pangutana karon, diin padong ang kwarta?” said Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama in a report in this newspaper.

Now the question: How was the terminal able to operate for so very long without city asking where the money was going or how it was being operated? It was also not just the vehicle operators who paid someone, the stalls and buildings in the area when it was still operational also owe the city government. How did they also escape scrutiny?

Who came up with the plan to have the terminal there and how to make it viable and feasible? It’s good to start from there. It’s not likely that the v-hire drivers just decided to take over the lot on their own and then the place became a de facto terminal out of sheer need.

That aside, it’s good that the city has a different plan for the lot, intending to build a medium-rise residential building for City Hall employees. While it is true that the place was accessible to many as a terminal, the fact was that traffic often stalled along Junquera Street when a vehicle left or arrived at the terminal, and traffic along that street can get congested during the rush hours, the precise time people headed to the terminal.

Still, who earned from the terminal’s operations --and how and how much-- must be determined.