Batanes coffee shop ransacked

IVANA, Batanes – The world-reknown Honesty Coffee Shop here that boasts of probably being the only store in the whole world without anyone tending it was ransacked and emptied of items and valuables recently.

Elena Gabilo, owner of the store, told The Star, that the door of the shop was forcibly opened during the early dawn Mass on Dec. 24. Gabilo and her husband attended the Mass, a few meters away, at 4 a.m.

Among the valuable items carted away by the robbers were bottles of Ginebra San Miguel gin, which at the time was not available in the entire province. Even fried fish that was supposed to be made available in the store later in the morning was not spared by the robbers.

Gabilo, who lamented the incident, said she has not reported the incident to the local police. “Of what use will it be to report it to the police?,” Gabilo said. “They only make it appear that they are helpless in all that is happening in town, if only to show that our town has a ‘zero’ crime rate,” Gabilo said.

Additionally, the Treasurer’s Office here was also ransacked early morning of Dec. 24.

It was first ransacked on Sept. 22 of about P82,000, during the height of a typhoon.

Police have not conducted any serious investigation of the incident and no suspect has ever been invited for interview. However, it was entered in the police blotter as a minor incident.

Then Wednesday, while every­one was in church attending the early dawn Mass, the Treasurer’s Office was again emptied of the previous day’s collection.

Insiders told The Star, at least P30,000 was lost this time to the still unidentified robbers.

Again, the local police have not conducted any investigation.

Officials of the local government have maintained a tight-lip on the incident, so people of the outside world will not know that crime does exist in this once peaceful and smallest town in the country.

Meanwhile, there seems to be lawlessness in the making hereabouts. While several ordinances have been enacted by the Sangguniang Bayan in order to maintain peace and order, no one is implementing them, according to unnamed townsfolk.

There is an ordinance that prohibits the manufacture, sale and possession of toy guns, but almost every school boy has a toy gun he plays with.

Then there is an ordinance that prohibits the explosion of firecrackers except on Dec. 24, 25 and 31 and on Jan. 1. But while explosions are everywhere, the local police authorities have yet to warn, scold or apprehend any violator they said.

Local government authorities appear to be blind and deaf on violations that are being committed in their very noses, even as local elections are still one year and four months away they lamented. – Jack Castaño