Two more municipal halls in Bohol have allegedly been burglarized by unidentified thieves on Sunday and Monday in what were the third and fourth suspected town hall burglaries in just over a month.

Authorities in Panglao said that P68,000 was stolen from their treasurer’s office in broad daylight on Sunday while initial reports from the Loboc police indicated that P5,000 was taken from the mayor’s office at dawn on Monday.

According to Emily Balidor, a janitress of the Panglao Municipal Hall, she went inside the treasurer’s office to inspect the room as she noticed that it was partly open at 4 p.m. on Sunday.

Upon entering the room, Balidor reportedly saw that the glass door’s lock was forcibly opened.

She then alerted the police who discovered that the safety vault containing the money was already opened and emptied.

However, another vault which contained approximately P500,000 was left locked and untouched during the burglary which police said took place between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Panglao police said that the vault which contained the stolen money was opened by keying in its number combination leading investigators to consider the theft case as an inside job.

In Loboc, the offices of the mayor and treasurer were allegedly broken into in the wee hours on Monday.

According to PO3 Daryl Yecyec, Loboc Police Station investigator, the stolen P5,000 was part of the town’s collection money which was kept inside a desk drawer of an employee inside the mayor’s office.

However, the suspect tried but failed to open a vault containing a larger amount of money while the town’s treasury employees have yet to report if money was stolen from their office, Yecyec said.

The suspect is believed to have passed through a window at the back part of the town hall before breaking into the mayor and treasurer’s offices.

Yecyec said that town hall employees discovered the suspected burglary at 7 p.m. on Monday as they reported for work.

On Januray 23, the Anda treasurer’s office allegedly lost P300,000 in a burglary which reportedly took place at 2 a.m. while P97,000 was stolen from its Balilihan counterpart at around 4 a.m.

Both cases remain unsolved. (Allen Dodydora)