Saturday, December 02, 2006 940 jail inmates now fill one building in Kalunasan
THE transfer of the remaining 1,500 male inmates at the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center (BBRC) to the facility in Barangay Kalunasan, Cebu City was suspended yesterday noon pending an inspection of the new building.
The two-story building is already filled to capacity and officials want to see if the other four-story building can now be used, said BBRC Warden Efren Nemeño said.
He said tiles and other finishing works are lacking in the two comfort rooms of each cell in the second building.
When this is done, the transfer of inmates will resume.
Nemeño said the noise barrage staged Thursday night by some 100 BBRC inmates in Barangay Lahug is not the reason the transfer was suspended.
He also denied that inmate Amado Quiros, 18, who has a pending robbery case, was injured in the commotion that lasted nearly one hour.
“Nobody was injured and it was not a riot. It was a noise barrage. We usually stop it by firing warning shots but because the inmates burned some materials, we had to use fire hoses,” he said.
The inmates created a ruckus after they received rumors that their leaders at the new jail were maltreated.
They were allegedly put in one cell and deprived of water and food last Thursday.
Nemeño denied this and blamed the wrong information on the relatives of those who were transferred to Kalunasan.
About 700 inmates facing drug cases were moved last Thursday. Around 240 more were brought to the new facility yesterday.
The BBRC near the Asiatown IT Park in Lahug was built in 1975 to hold about 250 prisoners.
Before the transfer, more than 2,400 inmates were locked behind bars there.
The facility in upland Kalunasan, about five kilometers from BBRC, has two buildings—the two-story edifice with 24 cells that can hold 40 inmates each and the four-story structure with 18 cells that have a capacity of about 90 persons each.
The four-story building was built by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency at a cost of P19 million, Nemeño said.
City Councilor Augustus Pe Jr. said the structure needs to be inspected to avoid complaints from the inmates.
For his part, City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem, committee on police, fire, penology and public safety chairman, said the transfer was premature.
He said the Asean summit is not enough reason to move the inmates, adding that President Arroyo may have been given wrong information so she would ask for the transfer.
City Hall’s refusal to lend Kaohsiung buses to the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology forced BBRC to rent 10 passenger jeepneys at P2,000 a day each.
Water is still a problem for the Kalunasan jail, but the BJMP asked the Provincial Government to allow them to tap the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center water source.
The Department of Public Works and Highways is also doing boring works in search of water for the jail.
In the meantime, BJMP transports water from the deep well in the old facility in Lahug to Kalunasan. (AIV/RHM)
