ILOILO City – The Police Regional Office 6’s (PRO-6) Crime Laboratory in Camp Delgado here analyzed the packs of white crystalline substance recovered from a septic tank of a building in Barangay Bulaqueña, Estancia, Iloilo.
The result?
The laboratory wasn’t sure what the
substance was because this had been contaminated, according to Police Major
Jonathan Pinuela, chief of Iloilo Police Provincial Office’s (IPPO)
Intelligence Division.
“I was able to talk to the chemist, Police Lieutenant Baldivieso. The contamination
made them unable to determine, too, if the substance was a precursor of illegal
drugs,” said Pinuela, ‘So gin butang ya negative.”
A confirmatory test would be conducted, said Pinuela, this time by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).
“Samples would also be sent to Manila for further analysis if the substance was illegal drugs or precursor of illegal drugs,” he added.
Laborers working on a building in the property of former mayor Rene Cordero in Barangay Bulaqueña, Estancia discovered the packs containing the white crystalline substance on Dec. 17.
In total, the packs weighed 149.25 kilos.
From what he had gathered, according to Pinuela, the building was rented by a Taiwanese national named Chin Tse Lin in 2002 and used as a processing area for food being exported to Taiwan.
“Daw squid, lobo-lobo gina process dira, gina preserve kag ginadala sa Taiwan,” Pinuela told Panay News.
The Taiwanese national abandoned the building in 2016 without a word, said Pinuela, citing information from former mayor Cordero.
Cordero recently hired laborers to rehabilitate the building. He wanted to transform it into a hotel./PN
