• CHERYL G. CRUZ
Bacolod Mayor Greg Gasataya is demanding that AVM Bernardo Slaughterhouse in Barangay Handumanan settle its rental arrears from January 2022 to January 2025 that now reached P4.6 million.
In a formal demand letter, the mayor specified that the unpaid balance covered 36 months of unsettled rental obligations.
“We just want to be fair with all business establishments in the city,” Gasataya said, and emphasized that this demand is more than just a warning and that the operator must comply or face the consequences.
“We have necessary and appropriate measures if they fail to comply with the demand,” he added in a city press release Sept. 4.
The current rental fee is at P129,883.05 a month.
AVM Bernardo Engineering Services has been operating the city’s abattoir since 2000, under a contract with the Bacolod local government that is set to expire in 2028.
In 2023, the Sangguniang Panlungsod pushed for an investigation into the operations of the slaughterhouse, following complaints about its services, and its failure to upgrade into a Triple A abattoir.
Aileen Grace Aldeguer, plant manager and representative of AVM Bernardo Slaughterhouse, in her letter to Councilor Celia Flor, then chairperson of the SP Committee on Markets and Slaughterhouse, had said “the upgrading of an abattoir to an ‘AAA’ category entails substantial amount of investment”.
She had attributed the delay in the upgrading “to the long period of the pandemic affecting the international community, and inflicting to businesses unprecedented economic devastations”.
It was also learned during the series of committee meetings that year that the abattoir operator still had delinquencies in rentals, amounting to P8.9 million, and had reportedly entered into a deed of undertaking with the city government to settle the arrears. | CGC
