TACLOBAN CITY- Leyte Board Member Anlie Apostol may just face her colleagues at the Sangguniang Panlalawigan to answer allegations hurled against her when she was the mayor of Carigara town.
This is if the board’s committee on blue ribbon chaired by Board Member Niccolo Villasin, who represents Leyte’s district like Apostol, will take action on the complaint filed against the latter.
Villasin said that the complaint against Apostol stemmed from her alleged act as mayor of Carigara and not as a board member.
“We will study the case. We will deliberate on it and study the validity for us to conduct an investigation. The alleged acts were done when she was still a mayor and now she is a board member so this will be taken in consideration,” Villasin said.
And in case they will conduct a probe, Villasin assured his colleague that the matter will be handled professionally and is just part of their duty.
Apostol, reached for her comment, decline to issue statement upon the advice of her lawyer.
The former mayor is being charged to have disbursed P6 million that was supposed to fund water impounding projects in three villages of Carigara.
However, these projects turned out to be “non-existent,” claimed a report conducted by municipal officials of Carigara.
Based on the documents submitted by the town councilors to the provincial board on March 14, they claimed that Apostol approved for the disbursement of funds in the amount of P6 million purportedly to construct water impounding projects for the villages of Binibihan, San Pablo and Paglaum.
The reported water impounding projects were said to occur sometimes in 2010, the year that Apostol was to end her nine year term as mayor of Carigara.
The P6 million was sourced from the P5 million the municipal government of Carigara received from the Bureau of Soils and Water Management and P1 million from the priority development assistance funds (PDAF) of former Rep. Trinidad “Ebbie” Apostol, the mother of Board Member Apostol.
It was alleged that during an investigation conducted by the members of the town council’s committee on rules, public ethics and accountability, on March 12, 2015 on the projects, it was discovered that these were “non-existence.”
Councilors Dennis Garay, Joenlee Larraga, Raul Lloren and Othello Crisostomo, claimed that they went to the three villages and found that there were no existing impounding projects in these barangays.
“Based on the authentic documents on hand pertaining to this water impounding projects…were never implemented despite of the fact that the money has been released by the local government unit of Carigara,”the report said.
