NBI offers P200K for info on missing British woman

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is offering a P200,000 reward for any information on the whereabouts of British woman who has been missing for almost a month now, its spokesperson said Friday. NBI spokesperson Cecilio Zamora said that friends and relatives of Carole Day, the Hong Kong-based British entrepreneur who has been missing since September 12, raised the amount as reward for any information on her whereabouts. “Sa mga kaibigan at kamag-anak manggagaling ang pabuya. Ang hindi lang malinaw sa akin ay kung na-turnover na ‘yung pera sa aming Manila office," he said in a phone interview on Friday. (The reward will come from her friends and relatives. What's not clear to me is if the money has already been turned over to our Manila office.) Zamora added that NBI has no updates yet on Day’s case as of posting time. He, however, maintained that the agency has already ruled out kidnapping as an angle since no ransom demands have been received. “Wala pang bagong anggulo. Kailangan talaga ng bagong impormasyon," he said. (We have no new angle. We really need new information.)
The Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported early last month that Day went missing after checking in at a hotel in Manila for a business trip. She has been completely out of contact since September 12, according to the report. Local immigration officials already said that based on their records, Day never left the Philippines since the day she was reported missing. A Facebook page has already been put up by Day’s son, Jai Day, to gather information on her mother’s whereabouts. Jai has already flown to Manila to search for his mother, and said that all agencies involved are “giving 100%" cooperation to solve the case. In a Sept. 28 interview by Julius Segovia of GMANews, Day’s son Jai said that based own his own knowledge, his mother arrived in the country on Sept. 10. She was supposed to have returned to Hong Kong on Sept. 15, but had not gone back since. According to the GMA News report, Day had checked into the Corporate Inn in Manila upon arrival. Hotel officials said the British woman had stayed for just nearly two days. On the morning of Sept. 12, she had called for a taxi and was heard to be going to Makati. According to Jai’s Facebook page, her mother was “last seen at the LRI Design Studio by her business partner at 9:30 a.m. on the 12th of September." The business partner, who was not identified, said Day was planning to make a trip to Cebu and Thailand. Jai said his mother has not contacted him or any relative or friend that he knows of since Sept. 12, but at first he merely assumed that “she was busy." Day, a resident of Hong Kong for the past 20 years, is said to be familiar with the Philippines as she visits the country “several times a month because of her furniture and interior décor business," according to the GMA News report. —JV, GMANews.TV