Cebu City relief goods found rotting

CEBU CITY — Relief goods consisting of food and building materials intended for distribution to calamity victims were found to have been merely stored and left undistributed, prompting Mayor Tomas Os-meña and the city council to order an investigation of the city’s Social Development Center (SDC).

Councilor Gerardo Carillo, who first received a complaint about the anomalous withholding of relief goods as early as November last year, visited the center in Barangay Labangon the other day and saw with his own eyes bags of rotten rice, rusting canned goods, decaying sheets of plywood, cans of paint, sheets of galvanized iron, nails, shovels and boxes of bottled water.

He also found canned sardines buried in a shallow hole in the compound.

In a letter to Osmeña coursed through Carillo, former city social worker Virginia Piccio said Nida Sistona, chief of the city’s Department of Social Welfare and Service (DSWS), allegedly ordered 200 cans of sardines buried inside the SDC compound on Nov. 21 last year without the required inspection and appraisal by the city auditor or his representative.

Piccio also alleged that Sistona has refused to extend assistance to fire victims and displaced slum dwellers who went to the DSWS for help on the pretext that no relief goods were available or that they needed to undergo assessment by social workers before any aid could be given.

Piccio again wrote Carillo on July 3 when her earlier letter was unacted upon.

In her second letter, Piccio claimed that a sack containing cans of spoiled sardines was also buried in the SDC compound.

This time, Carillo sent two of his staffers to the SDC and they too saw the same items which Carillo himself found the other day.

Sought for comment, Sistona admitted ordering the rusting cans of sardines buried last July 3 to prevent their distribution and avert health risks to those who may receive them.

She, however, denied a similar incident which Piccio claimed in her first letter. — Freeman News Service