Pasig City exec missing

Pasig City Mayor Vicente Eusebio offered yesterday a P20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the city’s urban poor officer who allegedly gypped millions of pesos from housing applicants since 1999.

Eusebio also ordered Superintendent John Sosito, the local police chief, to exhaust all means to arrest the suspect, Arlene Alcantara, who went into hiding after her victims filed multiple estafa cases against her.

With the reward, Eusebio is hoping that Alcantara, the former head of the city’s Urban Poor Affairs, would be arrested and sent to jail.

Among those victimized by Alcantara were members of the Pasig City police force and city hall employees such as street sweepers, traffic enforcers and market vendors.

"She fooled many people, so it is just fitting that she’ll be arrested and spend the rest of her life in jail," an angry Eusebio said.

What caught the ire of Eusebio was the fact that the street sweepers reportedly borrowed money from 5-6 lending institutions just to acquire a house or lot they can call "their own."

After learning that her victims were after her, Alcantara disappeared and left the country. But reports reaching Sosito showed that Alcantara is hiding with her family somewhere in a Rizal town. Sosito is verifying reports that Alcantara’s husband is working in a cement factory in the city. – Non Alquitran