ILOILO City – A barangay kagawad suspected of selling illegal drugs was caught in Barangay Mina West (Poblacion), Mina, Iloilo.
The arrest of Milard Pasaporte during a buy-bust operation on Saturday happened barely a month after all 22 barangays in the town were declared “drug-cleared.”
Pasaporte was a drug surrenderer – one of the suspected drug users and/or pushers whom police encouraged to surrender as part of the government’s intensified antidrug drive.
The 40-year-old village councilman was undergoing rehabilitation and “supposed to graduate this month,” said Senior Inspector Ma. Theresa Lero, chief of the Mina police station.
Pasaporte was a “high-value target level 3” in the police’s campaign against drugs, Lero said.
The barangay official surrendered in 2016. He was enrolled in the Police Regional Office 6’s rehabilitation program after that.
But at 7 a.m. on Saturday an undercover officer bought from Pasaporte a sachet of shabu for P1,950, the Mina police said.
Five more plastic packs of shabu were seized from him.
Pasaporte refused to take a recent drug test and failed to attend a recent barangay council session, said Lero.
All 22 villages in Mina were cleared from illegal drugs by a regional oversight committee on June 19.
Pasaporte started selling illegal drugs at around this time, intelligence information reaching the Mina police said.
His arrest constitutes a violation of one of the parameters for the drug-cleared declaration – the absence of a drug pusher, drug user/dependent, protector/coddler or financier.
Police will continue monitoring all barangays in Mina for the presence of any drug user or pusher, Lero said.
They will also look into the intelligence information that Pasaporte was a part of the Bolivar drug group.
Lero said they learned from sources that Pasaporte gets drug supplies from the nearby municipality of Pototan.
Suspected group leader Ernesto Bolivar is a native of Pototan. He remains at large as of this writing./PN
