Referencing the famous quotation that helped launch the American Revoluttion, the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM) decried the new city ordinance imposing a mandatory insurance coverage for all business owners with capitalization and gross income of more than P150,000.
Ruperto Cruz, PGKM chair, said the private sector is right in calling Angeles “not investment friendly” under the administration of Mayor Edgardo “EdPam” Pamintuan.
Ordinance No. 398 series of 2016 requires mandatory public legal liability insurance coverage of said businesses in the city except those within public markets, medical and dental clinics, accounting office and law offices and those with existing insurance.
“What they approved was class legislation, apparently favoring certain secors at the expense of others. It is a betrayal of public trust because it has no public consultation,” Cruz reiterated.
“Why exempt those in the public markets or medical, dental, accounting and law offices?” he asked.
“What if there is double dead meat and poultry inside the public market which can also cause danger to public health. Why exempt them? When it comes to food there should be no exemption,” he stated.
Poisoning
Cruz criticized city administrator Atty. Dennis Albert Pamintuan for inferring a reported poisoning incident in a citybased restaurant he did not name as the reason behind the approval of the ordinance. Media reports show it was the Yakimix restaurant at the Marquee Mall that figured in such incident.
Cruz said “the Yakimix management was clearly liable for the reported food poisoning incident and they have a clear obligation to their customers with no insurance firm needed to compensate the victims.”
“Now why should all businessmen get insurance for a mayor’s permit?” he asked.
“What is the basis of computation for their assessment? What does it cover? That is why we need public consultation but there was none,” he lamented.
Cruz likewise asked the city government what other cities or municipalities have enacted or enforced similar ordinances.
Do nothing
Cruz accused the city government of doing nothing to alleviate the plight of local businessmen. Instead, he said, “the Pamintuan administration has openly supported ventures detrimental to the local businessmen.”
He cited the Capilion Corp. Pte. Ltd. project and Honda Cars Philippines dealership and service center, both located at the main gate of the Clark Freeport Zone, which “foster an uneven playing field against the locals, not to mention the traffic nightmares they would create.”
Cruz also took to task Pamintuan for “neglecting to stand for Angeles in the case of the multi-billion pesos NLEx expansion project from Bulacan to Mabalacat which skipped the city.”
He also said the Friendship Bridge in Barangay Anunas should have been expanded to accommodate the increasing number of vehicles but they chose to privatize the lot adjacent to it, which is now for sale.
“For so many years we do not see any tangible project that was culled from our taxes. Where did our money go?” he asked.
Cruz said Pamintuan has nothing concrete to show. “All of the infrastructure projects are from the national government,” he added.
Corruption
“We refuse to believe that there is no corruption involved in collecting mandatory insurance coverage from securing business permits,” Cruz said.
“The collection of insurance fees does not go into government coffers but go directly to the insurance firms which have established offices at the lobby of the city hall and there’s apparently something illegal about that,” he said.
“Too much taxes burden the people already,” he stressed. “The RPT tax has increased 300 percent. The mandatory insurance coverage is an added burden to the people which makes civil disobedience justified,” he said.
Ombudsman
Meanwhile, Councilor Amos Rivera, one of the authors of the ordinance, said the commercial general liability (CGL) ordinance was made into law way back in 1997, amended in 2002, 2012 and recently in 2016.
“In fact, a fact-finding committee from the Ombudsman is requiring local government units to implement their own CGL ordinance,” said Rivera.
For the due process issue, ”I mentioned po na 1997 pa ordinance na siya and necessary publications on local circulations were also made, he said.
