Sacked Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) engineers currently detained at the Senate have asked to be placed under house arrest instead, Senate President Vicente Sotto III confirmed yesterday.
Sotto said former district engineer Henry Alcantara and former assistant district engineers Brice Hernandez and Jaypee Mendoza have written to the Senate regarding the request.
‘The (Blue Ribbon) committee has not decided. We’ll wait for (acting Blue Ribbon chair Sen. Erwin Tulfo),’ Sotto told reporters.
Tulfo is currently overseas on official business.
The Senate President noted that contractor Curlee Discaya, who is detained alongside the former DPWH officials, has not made a similar request.
Discaya, however, has filed a petition for habeas corpus before the Pasay City Regional Trial Court.
Hernandez was cited in contempt by the Senate on Sept. 8 for supposedly lying during a Blue Ribbon committee hearing, while Alcantara, Mendoza and Discaya were cited and ordered detained on Sept. 18.
Deadline
Discaya’s camp has until tomorrow to file a memoranda in its habeas corpus petition.
Discaya’s lawyer, Cornelio Samaniego III, gave few details about his client’s appearance before the Pasay Regional Trial Court Branch 298 yesterday.
‘We were given time to submit our respective memoranda until Wednesday, Oct. 15, so hopefully, our petition will be granted,’ Samaniego told reporters.
The lawyer said he is ‘confident’ that the court will side with his client.
Once the memoranda is submitted, Presiding Judge Melvin Cydrick Bughao can decide on the matter.
Southern backdoor under close watch
Meanwhile, security has been tightened in the southern Philippines to prevent personalities implicated in anomalous flood control projects from escaping through the country’s backdoor, an official of the police Maritime Group said yesterday.
MG deputy director for operations Col. Pedro Martinez Jr. said their units are coordinating with the local police in the southernmost parts of the country to be on the lookout for people implicated in the flood control scandal who might flee the country illegally.
Among these areas are Bongao in Tawi-Tawi wherein maritime police units are regularly coordinating with local authorities.
The Department of Justice has placed Sen. Francis Escudero, Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez and 31 others linked to corruption in flood control projects under an immigration lookout bulletin order.
The ILBO requires the Bureau of Immigration to closely monitor the travel movements of the persons in the list. However, the order does not prevent them from leaving the country unless a court issues hold departure orders against them.