Capitol offers legal team to aid

dads answer Ombud’s charges

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, June 5 (PIA)—Embattled barangay chairmen who, not only are deprived of their monthly honorarium for six months owing to their preventive suspension, but also have to lawyer themselves up to be properly represented in responding to the accusations can ask for help from the Capitol.

Sangguniang Panlalawigan Environment Committee chair Board Member and lawyer Jiselle Rae Villamor assured this last week as the notices of preventive suspension for 68 government officials and 36 sitting barangay chairmen finally arrived Monday afternoon, six days after Governor Erico Aristotle Aumentado was specially served his preventive suspension by agents of the Office of the Ombudsman.

Gov Aumentado and 68 other officials have been accused of grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service.

The Field Investigation Office of the Ombudsman charged the above public officials of such in relation to the construction, operation and expansion of the Captain’s Peak Resort in Canmano, Sagbayan, Bohol.

The Ombudsman charges that the public respondents acted with manifest partiality, evident bad faith, gross inexcusable negligence and committed gross violations of the National Integrated Protected Areas Systems Act of 1992 and the expanded National Integrated Protected Areas Systems Act of 2019, when they remained adamant and continuously tolerated the operation and expansion of the said resort despite its lack of environmental clearances and permits in flagrant violation of the NIPAS and E-NIPAS Act.

For these, the respondents are placed under preventive suspension for six months without pay, until the administrative adjudication of the case is terminated.

At this and feeling the fate of these unfortunate barangay chairmen, many of them accused simply by sitting as members of the mandated Protected Area Management Board (PAMB) of the Chocolate Hills Natural Monument (CHNM), the governor instructed her niece to get a Manila-based lawyer who could represent those barangay chairmen who may not have the means to get legal defense for their suits.

“Malipay ta kaayo ana nga balita,” according to Villaflor Barangay Chairman Perfecto M. Buro, who is still currently recuperating from a mild stroke which got him a few days after his oath taking as chairman.

The same sentiment is shared by Poblacion Vieja Batuan Chairman Emmanuel L. Jumawid, who is also finding ways to explain to his constituents their options after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) handed to them notices of violations for operating small sari-sari stores, vulcanizing shops or building houses in their barangays.

The government has placed the entire town of Batuan under the CHNM and is, by operation of law, under the protected area.

We have been living here since time immemorial, and the CHNM protection only came a few years back. How can we explain to our people that they have to respond to the notices of violations because it could aggravate and people may not like the outcome, Jumawid said. (PIABohol)

COULD USE SOME HELP. Suspended Poblacion Vieja Batuan Chairman Emmanuel Jumawid said the offer for a lawyer to help them is a welcome development, especially that barangay chairmen, who only get a measly honorarium for working in government frontlines, are also deprived of the financial help owing to the suspension. (PIABohol)