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BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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Tuesday, February 28, 2017
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ILOILO City – The Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) of Western Visayas is pressing for the return of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in the campaign against illegal drugs.
In a resolution unanimously passed, the RPOC urged President Rodrigo Duterte to reconsider his decision to pull out the police from the antidrug drive.
“We have seen problems regarding police forces in big cities…(However) in Iloilo City, in Guimaras and in the whole Western Visayas…we do not have that big problem with our policemen,” said Guimaras’ Gov. Samuel Gumarin, RPOC chairperson.
RPOC approved the resolution on Feb. 24 during its first quarter meeting for 2017.
The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) is now leading the antidrug campaign across the country. But the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) is also joining the drive via its proposed “Drug-Free Home” stickers project.
According to Gumarin, the PNP’s pullout from the campaign was jeopardizing the Police Regional Office 6’s (PRO-6) efforts against drug trafficking in Western Visayas.
The President must be informed of the fruitful police antidrug operations in the region, stressed Gumarin. The crime volume declined, he stressed.
The RPOC resolution would be forwarded to the Office of the President thru Secretary Ismael Sueno of the DILG.
Sueno was here Friday last week for a consultative meeting with various RPOCs in the Visayas regarding the proposed “Drug-Free Home” stickers campaign.
Citing a series of police involvement in the illegal drug trade and planting of evidence during antidrug operations, PNP’s Director General Ronald Dela Rosa, on the order of President Duterte, suspended indefinitely the police’s war on drugs just this Jan. 30.
“I dissolved the Anti-Illegal Drugs Group, all anti-drug units from the national, local to the police station level,” Dela Rosa announced in a press conference in Camp Crame, Quezon City.
The PRO-6, however, clarified that it would still help PDEA by acting as “supporting units.”
Dela Rosa said President Duterte told him to focus on its “internal cleansing” for the time being.
After the war against police scalawags, the campaign against illegal drugs will resume, said Dela Rosa./PN
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