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Except for one who is in the hospital, the other co-owners have not yet been visible.
“No one from the footwear company Kentex Manufacturing Corp. attended the House committee hearing Wednesday, May 20, on the fire which gutted its two-storey factory in Valenzuela on May 13 and killed 72 workers,” reports Tricia Aquino on InterAksyon.com.
The report noted: “The only person connected to Kentex who was present at the hearing of the Committee on Labor and Employment was Atty. Ferdinand Topacio, the legal counsel of one of the company directors, Charlie Ng, whom Topacio called ‘a passive investor’ with no participation in the day-to-day operations of the factory.”
Topacio, however, “assured the lawmakers that Ng would be present at the next hearing, and that he would obtain for the committee any information it needed.”
Meanwhile, another co-owner in the factory, Terence King Ong, who sustained burns while helping in the first attempt to put out the fire apologized to the famillies of the dead and the survivors, and pleaded for forgiveness from his hospital bed. Ong had also lost his son, Tristan in the blaze.
Meanwhile, a report by Mayen Jaymalin in The Philippine Star revealed: “During last Monday’s conference, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) was able to establish that Kentex labor subcontractor CJC Manpower Services is not registered with the DOLE as a legitimate subcontractor and that the latter was not paying the correct wages and benefits to its workers and was not remitting the contributions of its workers to the Social Security System (SSS), PhilHealth, and Pag-Ibig Fund.”
Photo: Dennis Datu, dzMM (Twitter)
