No drug tests in June since CPADAO has no more testing kits

CPADAO Chief Carmen Remedios Durano-Meca says that they will stop random drug tests for June because of lack of available testing kit stocks.| CDN Digital file photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines — There will be no random drug testing for government employees in Cebu province this June.

The Cebu Provincial Anti-Drug Abuse Office (CPADAO), which implements drug testing in local government units (LGUs) and other offices in the province, will not hold any drug testing activity for the whole month.

Read more: CPADAO to set up anti-drug kiosks in 12 Cebu province public high schools

CPADAO Chief Carmen Remedios Durano-Meca said they needed to move all their testing schedules to the first week of July because they no longer had the available testing kits.

The testing kits used by CPADAO come from those procured by the province through the funds of the CPADAO and those coming from the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7).

Stocks from both sources had already been exhausted and had not been replenished yet, Meca said. 

She said that they could not make procurement requests for testing kits yet since the Capitol was still in the transition period going to the next administration.

“Nahutdan na ta sa mga drug testing kits unya di man ta pwede mo-PR (purchase request) until the new administration [comes in] mao na nga sa July na nato  mabalik og implement for the drug free workplace policy,” Meca said in a press conference on Monday, June 3.

(We don’t have any more drug testing kits and we can’t purchase for new ones until the new administration comes in. That is why we will just resume the drug testing for the drug free workplace policy in July.)

“Unless if we will be given by DOH drug testing kits, then we can proceed right away. Duha man gud ang sources nato for the drug testing kits: the one from our resources and those given by DOH. Both sources of supply are depleted already,” Meca added.

Read more: Mandatory drug testing in schools: PDEA, PNP tells DepEd to take charge

The drug testing for the implementation of the drug-free workplace policy in the province is implemented per request of local government units and offices, including barangays.

“We cannot account as to how many were supposed to be scheduled for drug testing this June because the requests for the drug tests are not date specific. What we did is that we set the schedule for the drug testing requests on July,” Meca said.

Meca also said that teachers from a number of public schools in the province were supposed to be due for the drug testing this June./dbs