Gordon rejects Duterte takeover of BOC

Senate Blue Ribbon committee chairman Senator Richard Gordon on Wednesday rejected the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee’s proposal to grant President Rodrigo Duterte emergency powers to take over the operations of the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

Speaking at the continuation of the Senate’s investigation on the P6.4-billion shabu shipment from China, Gordon said the President has to attend to other significant and urgent matters.

The senator was referring to an 82-page report of the House panel recommending the granting of emergency powers to Duterte to take over the BOC which has come under fire due to allegations of corruption.

“I don’t agree that the President takes over Customs. He has more important things to do. This (shabu shipment issue) is important, but he has more important things to do,” Gordon said.

In its report, the House’s ways and means panel considered the corruption in the BOC a “national emergency.” It likewise, proposed the abolition of the BOC and recommended the establishment of two new bureaus that would replace it.

The Senate and the House has launched separate investigations into the shabu shipment which passed through the “green lane” and skipped Customs scrutiny. The cargo containing the contraband was later seized in a warehouse in Valenzuela City.

But during the hearing, Gordon put to task the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) to recover all seized illegal drugs in the country, which is part of their mandate.

Gordon noted that the PDEA had only destroyed a small portion of the confiscated billion pesos worth of illegal drugs that it recovered this year.