Gov nixes Toral comeback; jail personnel to be probed; visits continue to be suspended
Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III will be the jail warden of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) while the investigation against all jail personnel will be conducted.
Davide said he would be the one overseeing the operations of the CPDRC until the investigation would be done.
He, however, did not say when the investigation on the CPDRC personnel would be finished.
Davide said that Jail Warden Romeo Manansala would still be at the CPDRC, but Manansala would be under his supervision while this would be done.
He said the provincial government would be investigating all personnel of the CPDRC, most especially the jail guards on the presence of contraband inside the facility like cellphones, laptops, and even illegal drugs.
He said he would also be forming a task force to do the investigation together with the Committee on Discipline and Investigation (Codi), which had already started investigating a list of names submitted last Monday by Marco Toral, the former consultant on jail matters, and Manansala.
The list are the jail personnel who allegedly connived with inmates in bringing contraband inside the facility.
He said the Codi, which would be headed by Capitol administrator Mark Tolentino, would be enforcing the penalties to those who would be found guilty of the offenses against them.
“We’ll have to purge. We have to find out who among these guards are involved. We have also to investigate the allegations that there are prison officials who are also involved and also who are the inmates there involved,” Davide said.
He even said he was suspecting that the source of illegal drugs was inside the CPDRC.
He said this was one of the possibilities that the investigators would be looking into.
He also said that this was also among the reasons the visits for the inmates would continue to be suspended.
The CPDRC visits to inmates were suspended since last month after an inmate, who pretended to be a visitor, escaped.
However, Davide said he would grant Manansala’s request to allow some inmates, who graduated from the Alternative Learning System (ALS), to have two family members as visitors during their graduation ceremony yesterday.
Manansala said that a total of 22 inmates graduated from the ALS program which is being implemented by the Department of Education (Deped) inside the CPDRC – two from elementary and 20 from high school education.
The inmates started their classes with three teachers in October last year. Their classes are held inside the CPDRC every Mondays and Tuesdays.
Davide also said he would not bring back Toral as Capitol consultant on jail matters despite the signature campaign initiated by more than 2,000 CPDRC inmates who wanted Toral back to his post.
“I have it (the signature campaign). It’s so thick. Well, we know they have already established a good relationship. These inmates know him (Toral) because he has helped them. But I’m sorry, I have to deny it. He already resigned and I accepted his resignation,” Davide told reporters yesterday.
He said he was not considering anybody to replace Toral.