DURANO-MECA
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu Provincial Anti-Drug Abuse Office (CPADAO) plans to establish anti-drug information kiosks in public high schools so that they can come up with concrete intervention programs for minors who have fallen prey to illegal drugs.
CPADAO Chief Carmen Remedios Durano-Meca, in a news forum on Friday, said that they had chosen 12 schools from the different districts in the province to be the pilot areas of the ‘Barkada Kontra Druga Movement’ Kiosks.
The kiosks, which will be manned by the officers of the schools’ Supreme Student Government (SSG), will activate the students assistance program and the parent-and-teachers assistance program, which are anchored to create interventions for the youth that have high possibility of engaging into illegal drugs and those drug surrenderers, who are in school.
Meca said they would be closely coordinating with the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to craft measures so that the young drug surrenderers could be subjected to a community-based drug treatment program that would be suited to them.
Up to date, Meca said concrete measures in handling minors who become drug surrenderers had yet to be established.
“We need to coordinate with DepEd because of the confidentiality as well as kana nga mga minors involved. Very sensitive ang issue sa minors, and our main direction is to be of help ani nga mga minors that need treatment as well,” Meca said.
A part of the agreement between CPADAO and DepEd, Meca said, would be the continuing education program for teachers to capacitate them in handling their students who previously surrendered.
The selection of schools that would be piloted in the program, Meca said, was based on the density of drug affectation of the local government units.
“We based it on the density, katong highly affected or those with high number of drug surrenderers nga mga LGUs (local government units),” Meca said./dbs