JOE MENDOZA
Aurora News Desk
AURORA, ZAMBOSUR—Mayor Enrique Cabahug Jr. is seeking judicial remedy at the courts and filed a writ of mandamus against members of the town council for failing to enact the appropriation ordinance for the funding of two halted Infres projects.
Mandamus is a form of an order from a superior court to any government, subordinate court, corporation or public authority to do or forbear from doing some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do or refrain from doing, as the case may be, and which is in the nature of public duty and in certain cases of a statutory duty.
Cabahug, representing the municipality as petitioner, filed his civil action for Mandamus at the Regional Trial Court 9th Judicial Region, Branch 30, this town, Dec. 15 naming all the Sangguniang Bayan members as respondents.
In his six-page petition, Cabahug said: “That notwithstanding all these repeated assurances that there is nothing irregular and illegal in the Infres Project, the respondents still failed to enact the ordinance. Instead, the fear of the inevitable happened when the respondents passed a resolution requesting anew for a Legal Opinion from the Provincial Legal Office for the rescission of the several resolutions they passed concerning the Infrastructure for Rural Productivity Enhancement Sector Projects.”
The two multi-million sub-projects mentioned are the 28.1 kilometer farm-to-market road coting P67,703,539.03 and the 9 schemes Barangay Water System, worth P21,000,181.26.
Cabahug told this paper both projects are 25 percent into completion and that works were halted after SB’s refusal to enact the appropriation ordinance for the initial release of the fund’s first tranche from the National Government.
“That as further manifestation of their desire not to pursue the Infres Project, the respondents thru the Vice Mayor Leocio Zanoria wrote a letter dated November 24, 2008 to the Department of Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap seeking stoppage of the project,” Cabahug lamented.
The mayor added that after exhausting all remedies, he had no other recourse but to file the instant Petition for Mandamus to effect the issuance of and order commanding the respondents to enact the needed appropriation ordinance.
As of press time, no comments can be taken from any members of the town council.