Former Cabinet Secretary Rigoberto Tiglao wants the chief executive officer of Lazada Philippines sacked over the proliferation of fake goods for sale on the platform.
Tiglao continued his tirade against the e-commerce app owned by bilyonaryo Jack Ma for the second straight week, his fury building up after he wrote about the fake and substandard appliances he bought from Lazada’s accredited merchants.
“What is so despicable about Lazada is that I had informed them over a year ago to stop selling pirated versions of my book. It ignored my plea,” Tiglao wrote.
He called for Ma’s executives to send a different CEO, saying the Spanish national Carlos Otermin Barrera can’t do the job well.
“[B]ecause he mostly worked in Europe, obviously doesn’t grasp the intricacies and dangers of the e-commerce market in a developing country like the Philippines, which has, sad to say, residents who have very advanced skills in scamming as well as in internet technology,” Tiglao said.
“Barrera is obviously a babe in the woods, in the wild, wild internet jungle here.”
He also dubbed the Trade department under Secretary Alfredo Pascual’s watch as “inutile.”
“Because the Trade department hasn’t been monitoring Lazada and other e-commerce, our country is probably being transformed into a haven for pirated books,” he added. “This column’s title accuses the DTI as inutile in clamping down on scammers and pirates in the e-malls, especially Lazada, mainly because it is practically invisible in this fast-growing billion-peso industry, with its small staff of 12, I was told, who all are apparently absorbed in drafting the ‘E-commerce Philippine Roadmap’.”