Abra town mayor, wife suspended

BANGUED, Abra – The Abra provincial board has issued a sixmonth suspension order against Lagayan Mayor Jendricks Luna and his wife, Vice Mayor Joy Chrisma, in connection with the alleged anomaly on a road construction project.

Vice Gov. Ronald Balao-as along with eight of the nine-member Abra provincial board found Mayor Luna and his wife guilty of dishonesty and grave misconduct over a supposedly unfinished 1,740-meter Bai-Nagba Road in Barangay Ba-i, Lagayan, worth ₱1,071.850 which the mayor reported as already concreted.

On Aug. 6, this year, Sangunniang Bayan member Noel Cortez complained before the Abra provincial board that the road project, supposedly funded by the town’s Internal Revenue Allotment, has remained “a pebble and dirt road” despite Mayor Luna reporting it as already completed.

Immediately, the Abra provincial board summoned Mayor Luna to disprove Cortez’s allegation and

allowed him to undergo the usual “due process.”

Luna, through his counsel, even asked the provincial board to “hands off” the investigation, insisting that some sections of the road were completed and there was no irregularity in the road construction project.

But the Abra provincial board asked Gov. Jocelyn Bernos to administratively suspend the Lunas for three months so that they cannot influence the probe conducted to ferret out the truth of Cortez’s complaint.

On Sept. 11, Bernos placed the duo under preventive suspension for 90 days.

The Lunas maintained that the project was completed and even submitted photographs of a concreted road.

But the Provincial Engineering Office inspectorate team found out that the road was made of “earth road surface.”

The provincial board thus ruled, “respondent Jendricks Luna’s act of

making it appear that the subject project was complete but, in truth, it was not even started is a blatant lie and a clear act of dishonesty which warrants administrative penalty.”

Vice Mayor Luna is likewise liable like her husband, the provincial board said, because without her as presiding officer of the Sangguniang Bayan, the project and the funding would not have been approved.

Mayor Luna, in a telephone conversation, begged off to comment, saying he has not read the contents of the decision.