Escalante ok’s jai alai bet
station operations
IT’S IN OTHER TOWNS, CITIES, TOO – YAP
BY CARLA GOMEZ

The Escalante City government has granted a business permit for a jai alai betting station to operate and those who question its existence can go to court to challenge its legality, Mayor Melecio Yap Jr. yesterday said.

Yap charged the media with being unfair to him for zeroing in on Escalante when, he claimed, jai alai exists in other towns and cities in the province.

“Name me a place in Negros where there is none, it is not just in Escalante, it is rampant in other places, you cannot deny that,” he said in an interview with the media at the provincial Capitol in Bacolod City.

The Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Negros Occidental has unanimously passed a resolution requesting Department of Education Region 6 head Mildred Garay to investigate the School’s Division Superintendent of San Carlos City, for allegedly not taking action against a principal facing charges for acts of lasciviousness.

Board Member Renato Gustilo, chairperson of the SP committee on Peace and Order, who authored the resolution, said yesterday that he is hoping that the DepEd regional director will initiate administrative sanction, if evidence warrants, against San Carlos School’s Division Superintendent, Nelly Valerio, also for failure to act on the complaints of the parents of two abused elementary pupils, who were victimized allegedly by a school principal, whose identity is being withheld by the police.

Supt. Harold Tuzon, San Carlos police chief, said the suspect has already been charged before the City Prosecutor’s Office for acts of lasciviousness in relation to child abuse law, or RA 7610.

The Special Weapons and Tactics team of the Bacolod City Police Office lacks proper training and does not have adequate equipment for their operations, City Police Director Senior Supt. Celestino Guara admitted yesterday.

Guara said he is proposing to Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia that necessary equipment for the SWAT team  be purchased, while a seminar workshop, especially on managing a hostage crisis, was held at the BCPO headquarters last week.

He said that once the equipment are purchased, he will divide the 25 SWAT members into teams and also form another for the Explosives and Ordnance Division that will deal with bomb threat calls and detonation of explosive materials.