Former Daanbantayan mayor fined for Yolanda fund mess

AUGUSTO D. CORRO, former mayor of Daanbantayan town in Cebu, has been found guilty of “simple negligence” by the Office of the Ombudsman and is facing a fine of two months’ worth of salary. The Ombudsman, in a statement, said Mr. Corro’s “culpability stemmed from his flip-flopping on the qualified beneficiaries of the Emergency Shelter Assistance (ESA), a financial assistance fund from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) released to victims of typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan),” which struck central Philippines in 2013. Under the ESA program, qualified beneficiaries are entitled to P30,000 for residents whose houses were completely destroyed by the typhoon and P10,000 for those whose houses were partially destroyed. Daanbantayan received an ESA allocation of almost P426 million. Mr. Corro, who lost his bid for reelection in 2016, was spared from graft charges as the Ombudsman said there was no “evident bad faith” in the classification mess. “The act of classifying complainant’s abode and several others as situated within the danger/unsafe zones without proper reference to the CLUP and multi-hazard maps, albeit improper and careless, does not, by itself, establish the presence of manifest partiality, evident bad faith and/or gross inexcusable negligence,” the Ombudsman said.