By GENALYN D. KABILING
Another fleet of smuggled luxury cars and motorcycles will be destroyed at Port Irene in Cagayan next week.
President Duterte said he would travel to Port Irene to oversee the destruction of the imported vehicles as part of the government’s crackdown on smuggling.
“Maybe next week I will go to Port Irene to destroy the Lamborghini and other sports cars there,” the President said during his visit to Zamboanga Sibugay Thursday.
Duterte, a motorcycle enthusiast, admitted that his heart bleeds whenever he sees motorcycles getting destroyed but recognized that destruction of these smuggled vehicles would help curb smuggling.
“I’m fond of motorcycles, but not very much for cars. There are motorcycles that would be destroyed there too. My heart will really bleed but there’s nothing that I can do because the only way to settle this thing about smuggling is just to simply stop it altogether and you do not profit from it because you haven’t been paid yet,” he said.
The President has authorized the destruction of smuggled cars instead of placing them for auction to warn car importers who evade payment of import duties.
Duterte was in Port Irene last March to watch a bulldozer run over more than a dozen smuggled vehicles. The cars were impounded at the free port due to irregularities.
“If there is no consignee or the consignee is fictitious, unknown, AKA lang other, also known as, AKA, mga aliases, all of them will be destroyed. But those behind their importation have already grown rich from that trade,” Duterte said.
