President Rodrigo Duterte has accepted the resignation of Undersecretary Eliseo Rio Jr. of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Malacañang announced Friday.
Rio resigned in February, saying younger employees in the DICT should be given the chance, and that he wanted to spend more time with his family, given his old age.
“The Palace thanks [Undersecretary] Rio for his invaluable services to the nation and we wish him well in all his future endeavors,” Palace spokesman Harry Roque said in a statement.
Rio, an engineer who was a brigadier-general in the military, became commissioner of the National Telecommunications Commission in 2001.
He became DICT undersecretary in 2016 and officer in change in 2017.
Malacañang also announced Duterte’s firing of Assistant Secretary Kristoffer James Purisima of the Office of the Civil Defense (OCD).
“Purisima has been relieved from his post effective immediately due to loss of trust and confidence,” Roque said.
The OCD is in charge of tracking donations for the coronavirus response and redistributing them to other agencies in need. John Ezekiel J. Hirro