The city recognized an employee of the City Veterinary and Agriculture Office (CVAO) for his honesty when he willfully returned to the rightful owner a huge amount of money that found along the road leading to the slaughterhouse.
Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong led city officials in awarding the certificate of recognition and the Zealous Award 2020 to Alexander C. Ortega, a 15-year CVAO employee for his good deeds and honesty in returning some 256,000 to the owner.
Ortega narrated that at around 4 am of August 20, 2020 while he was on his way to their office to change his clothes after performing his stunning duties at the abattoir, he chanced upon a cellophane bag that was at the center of the road.
He immediately picked up the bag and upon inspection, he was surprised to see that the bag contained a huge amount of bundled money.
Temptation did not prevail upon him as he temporarily kept the money on his pocket and proceeded to ferry the assigned meat inspector to the city public market for them to perform their regular task of inspecting the meat prior to the sale in the different market stalls.
After attending to his market duties, Ortega went back to the slaughterhouse for his regular dumping duties where the generated waste in the abattoir will be ferried to the waste transfer station.
While doing his task of cleaning the CVAO vehicles, he overheard butchers talking about the huge amount of money that was lost by their colleague which was supposed to be used to purchase the one week supply of beef of the businessman. He claimed that the one who accidentally lost the money is the trusted aide of the beef supplier in the city.
Ortega immediately conducted his own investigation on how the money was lost and after interviewing more than 10 individuals in the abattoir, he concluded that the money was accidentally lost by the trusted aide of the beef supplier, thus, he immediately turned over the money to the abattoir division for them to locate the owner of the money.
Ortega stated that he was happy to be used by God as an instrument to return the lost money because the trusted aide of the business n and his wife were desperate in finding ways on how to replace the said amount. The butcher was said to have opted to sell his property in the lowlands while his wife went to seek the assistance of lending institutions just to replace the lost amount.
“I was never tempted to take hold of the money because I knew from the start that the huge amount will be used for trading purposes. I am just so happy that I was used by God as instrument to return the amount to the rightful owner,” Ortega stressed.
Marcos Sillatoc, who represented the beef trader during the recognition of the honest worker, was the son-in-law of the beef supplier who entrusted the huge amount to the butcher that was supposed to purchase the week-long supply of beef for the city.
Ortega urged fellow employees to continue to adhere to the virtue of honesty because he was never tempted to take the amount even if it was more than his annual salary because he was trained to be righteous by his parents in the first place. By Dexter A. See