A photo was taken with some personnel from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Bohol Field Unit and the newly acquired narcotic detection dogs (NDDs) Uno and Hyper. | Photo from PDEA-7
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA-7) intensifies random K9 inspections to interdict the possible illegal drug trade in mails and parcels in the region.
Leiah Albiar, spokesperson of PDEA-7, said that these inspections were part of their existing coordination with firms like Lalamove, J&T, and others.
Further, the national office continues to work in coordinating with other delivery/shipping companies to lessen or stop the drug personalities from taking advantage of the services offered by these firms.
Albiar said this following the seizure inside a parcel of at least 50 grams of ‘shabu’ with around P340,000 market value last Saturday, August 21, in Barangay Poblacion 2, in Tagbilaran City, Bohol province.
READ: Shabu worth 340K found inside parcel during K9 inspection of Tagbilaran City forwarding firm
She said that further investigation would be conducted to determine the identities of the sender and the consignee.
Albiar refused to give further information because of planned operations to be conducted against suspects.
Albiar said that this routine inspection was in full coordination with the respective company.
There are K9 units provided in every provincial office that conduct random inspections in piers, airports, and warehouses of these forwarding companies.
The random inspections in these areas are part of PDEA-7’s operational targets that they do year-round with other regional offices. Since this is a daily operation, she said she could not provide a rate on how far they were in their campaign against illegal drugs for this year alone.
Meanwhile, based on the figures from the Realnumbersph, the government’s unitary report on the campaign against illegal drugs, from July 1, 2016, to July 30, 2021, there are at least 207,007 anti-illegal drug operations conducted with around 298,348 arrested individuals nationwide. From these operations, they have seized a total of 8,077.58 kilos of ‘shabu’ seized with a market value of P50.94 billion.
READ: PDEA-7 tries to cut off another way for drug peddlers to deliver illegal goods