Reports about the rising HIV cases among inmates in the Cebu City Jail due to frequent sharing of needles used for injecting nubain is yet another headache for Cebu City officials who already have more than their hands full dealing with other problems faced by their constituents like garbage, flooding and declining water supply.
Again, the problem lies in the porous security of the Cebu City Jail with families and even motorcycle-for-hire (habal-habal) drivers all pitching in to deliver contraband items to the inmates.
It’s both sad and troublesome to note that even behind bars, inmates create problems for the government at large and society as a whole, and it is up to us law-abiding citizens through our duly elected government to bear the burden of their rehabilitation.
And that task of keeping them locked up with nowhere to go, away from anyone they can harm and those who wish them harm, befalls on the jail security, most of whom conspire with inmates to ensure the delivery of drugs stashed inside seemingly legitimate items.
If it’s not shabu, which can shrink a person’s brain to mush as President Rodrigo Duterte keeps hammering to the point of redundancy, it’s other drugs like nubain or nalbuphine, a painkiller that can be quite addictive.
Cebu City Councilor Dave Tumulak said it’s possible that the users of nubain had been infected long before they were jailed and that any possibility that the HIV had been contracted through sexual intercourse is quite small.
Reports about the involvement of habal-habal drivers in transporting illegal drugs to the Cebu City Jail should be looked into, and those responsible should be penalized. This is yet another strike against the drivers, whose operations in the city remain questionable and not yet fully recognized by the government’s transport agencies.
The city government should warn these operators to remove these drivers from their ranks if they ever hope to gain more acceptance and recognition for their continued operation in the city.
Tumulak’s move for the assignment of tanods to patrol the area should be complemented with vigilance by the nearby community who knows the goings on of the jail area best — unless some of them are in cahoots with the inmates themselves.
Just as importantly, the city government should institute a drug intervention program that includes not just daily inspections and roundups of cells — which are supposedly being made more difficult by HIV-infected inmates intentionally spilling their blood inside their cells to ward off inspectors — but also spiritual assistance which can lead them to the road to rehabilitation.
All of these are just stopgap measures, but for now, it’s time to get the community involved in stopping the flow of drugs and infected needles inside the city jail.
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