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CEBU CITY, Philippines — Seventeen of the 107 drug-cleared barangays in Siquijor Province have retained their drug-cleared status this year while the remaining 90 barangays continued to be validated.
Leia Alcantara, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in Central Visayas (PDEA-7) spokesperson, said that the validation of these 90 barangays by the Regional Oversight Committee Barangay Drug Clearing (ROCBDC) were ongoing.
Alcantara said that 107 barangays were certified drug-cleared since 2017.
However, the status of these barangays will be validated yearly by the ROCBDC, whom the PDEA-7 is a part of.
She also said that once they receive a report about the presence of drug personalities in a drug-cleared barangay, then they would revalidate immediately the status of the barangay.
Alcantara also said that Siquijor province had 134 barangays and that 27 of these barangays were already declared drug-free since 2017.
Those validated and undergoing validation were the remaining 107 drug-cleared barangays.
Drug-cleared barangays are villages that used to be affected by the illegal drug trade but drug offenders had already surrendered and graduated from different interventions.
A drug-free status, on the other hand, is given to unaffected barangays that have been vetted and confirmed by the ROCBDC.
“Katong mga na drug-cleared nato, ivalidate man na nato usab. Katong mga nadeclare, especially, 2017 to 2020, givalidate man na nato,” Alcantara said.
(Those who are drug-cleared, we validate them again. And we validate them again especially those declared from 2017 to 2020.)
“Naay 17 nga na validate na, retained ang ilahang status sa 17. Katong uban, ongoing ang atoang validation ato. Naa lay mga more on DILG [Department of Interior and Local Government] nga side nga atoang gicheck,” Alcantara said.
(There are 17 barangays that we have validated already, their status is retained. For the others, our validation is ongoing. We just are checking more on the side of the DILG.)
The period of validation varies for each barangay.
READ: Can a drug barangay status be reverted?
Alcantara said that the working and functional Barangay Anti-Drug Abuse Council had greatly helped in the drug-clearing process in Siquijor.
In these drug-cleared barangays, she said, that all drug personalities were already accounted for, and that drug users had already graduated in their community-based rehabilitation program.
For those small-time drug pushers, Alcantara said that the local government of Siquijor had been preparing their Balay Silangan, a community-based rehabilitation program that would give drug offenders second chances where interventions would be provided, reforming them to become law-abiding citizens.
Aside from this, Siqujor’s continuous demand reduction and sustainability operations had also helped in sustaining their status in terms of the rate of drug proliferation in their respective villages.
Alcantara said that the community had also been empowered to have their own barangay drug watch there where they would immediately coordinate with the police should they notice transients or any suspicious activities in their villages.
Alcantara said that she hoped that these barangays would maintain their respective statuses in the long run, and she reminded the officials anew that monitoring would be the key to maintain their status.
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