The Metro Manila Development Authority is investigating and is set to file criminal charges against an alleged agent of the Optical Media Board who berated and displayed his gun to a member of a towing team accredited by the agency in Quezon City.
MMDA chairman Danilo Lim tapped general manager Thomas Orbos to look into the incident which transpired during an anti-illegal parking operations at the corner of Scout Tobias and Scout Limbaga streets Wednesday morning.
“We will not let this incident pass because we have to protect our people from abusive individuals but we will not also tolerate our personnel who are engaged in illicit activities. We will also apply on them the full force of the law,” Lim said.
For his part, Orbos said they are investigating the incident and will not allow any person to threaten or abuse any of the MMDA personnel or those working to clear the roads of obstructions.
The incident happened on May 24 around 9:30 a.m. during the anti-illegal parking operations, led by the agency’s supervising operations officer, Bong Nebrija, at the corner of Scouts Tobias and Limbaga near the OMB building.
While towing team leader Larry Miravite was taking a video of around four illegally-parked vehicles along Scout Tobias, a man accosted him and started cursing him.
Miravite calmly told the man, who was reportedly one of the owners of the vehicles to be towed, that his vehicle was parked on a tow-away zone and that they were only doing their job in clearing the area, which is part of the Mabuhay Lane. He told the agitated man to park his vehicle elsewhere.
Miravite said the man boarded his car and approached him again, lifting his polo shirt and showing a gun tucked in his waist. The man, who later drove his car away from the area, was later identified by one of the OMB officials as Ronnie Tampingco, an OMB agent.
Nebrija and other MMDA personnel tried to talk to the man who had apparently ignored the agency’s anti-illegal parking personnel and walked straight to the OMB building on Scout Limbaga.
The towing team managed to haul off one van registered to OMB which was also illegally parked in the area.
Prior to the incident, an elderly man and his son refused to be issued a violation ticket from the MMDA towing team for illegally parking on the sidewalk along Scout Tobias.
The MMDA has intensified its clearing operations of road networks in Metro Manila as part of the directive of President Rodrigo Duterte to ease the traffic situation.