BANGUED, ABRA – Abra Governor Ma. Jocelyn Valera-Bernos throws her full support to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war versus drugs, vowing her province will soon be cleared from the drug scourge very soon.
Valera-Bernos, who attended the meeting between Duterte and at least 70 governors in the country in Malacanang Thursday, said in reiterating the present administration’s battle versus drugs, the President also warned local officials to stop their drug business if they are into it.
Duterte accordingly showed a thick file of local officials who are into drugs and trading it and gave to the interior department, “so that we could warn our local officials to stop,” Valera-Bernos said.
The lady governor, who was Abra’s former congresswoman, confirmed there were local officials in Abra who were into drugs, “but they surrendered (already).”
Although the whole of Abra province is practically drug-free, six months after the Duterte administration threaded an all-out war against it as vouched by the province’s police, the governor said they could not yet consider it officially drug-free. “A few towns were declared drug-free,” she said, but the declaration is not as a province.
The Abra police said that all 27 Municipal Anti-illegal Drugs Councils (MADACs) headed by their town mayors have certified that all barangays are free of illegal drugs on Christmas Day 2016.
Sr. Inspector Grace Marron, Abra police spokesperson, had said the Technical Working Group of the Cordillera police had accepted the certifications from all the anti-drug abuse councils from the 27 towns.
Based on the parameters charted by the Philippine National Police’s headquarters, all 303 barangay drug abuse councils in Abra confirmed that not a single drug user or pusher remains in the barangays.
Before the Duterte administration, a highly-placed official of the Phil. Drug Enforcement Agency-Cordillera admitted that shabu is selling like hotcakes in an alleged “shabu tiangge” at a barangay in Bangued, the province’s capital town.
Even earlier on, a big businessman, related to an influential political family in the province, was caught with shabu in the capital town.
Meanwhile, the highland region is eyeing to be drug-free by yearend.
This, as at least 37 barangays in the highlands, specifically in Benguet and Baguio, are still being cleared of the drug scourge.
Regional Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operation Task Group (RAID SOTG) chief Senior Inspector Benedict Gang-aoen said 19 barangays in Baguio City and 18 barangays in Benguet are being closely watched and undergoing drug clearing operations.
There were 362 barangays recorded earlier as under drug-influence already cleared of illegal drug use.
Out of 1,177 barangays in the whole region under the drug watch, 362 previously cleared barangays, thus the remaining 815 barangays.
Gang-aoen said they are working on the positive outcome of the war on drugs nationwide in collaboration with the different town police stations, local government units, the Barangay Peacekeeping Action Team (BPATS), stakeholders, community and the media. ABN
February 4, 2017
February 4, 2017
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