Monday, July 02, 2007 City jail gives up 'new life'
ONE of the last measures the 10th Cebu City Council approved last week was an ordinance renaming the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center (BBRC) as the Cebu City Jail.
Vice Mayor Michael Rama said he will insist on the name change even though the facility is run by a national agency.
The Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) is empowered to exercise supervision and control over all city and municipal jails, as stated in a 1991 law that established the Philippine National Police under the Department of Interior and Local Government.
But Rama said he was the one who brought up the idea, and Councilor Procopio Fernandez sponsored an ordinance renaming the facility.
Last April, the council also approved Carreta’s request to rename Bagong Buhay Elementary School after the barangay because officials did not want the school mistakenly branded as a jail extension.
The request dated back to 2004, when Carreta’s Barangay Council recommended the change because it does not want the school to share its name with an “institution with a bad reputation.”
The Police Coordinating and Advisory Council, too, said that “the name Bagong Buhay is a misnomer that when translated means a new life, which is far from the truth.”
It noted that BBRC earned a reputation “for various illegal activities being perpetuated inside its premises, such as the prevalence of illegal drugs, gambling, connivance of jail guards and inmates.”
Rama felt the same way.
In proposing the measure, Fernandez said there is no ordinance that named the jail BBRC, and although offenders are supposed to be reformed after serving their sentences, the facility is just a jail and not a rehabilitation center.
Rama, though, could expect no objection from the BJMP because Cebu City Jail Warden Efren Nemeño, in a letter dated March 19, 2007, said their superior has ordered that the jail facility be named Cebu City Jail as early as last April.
And if there is a city ordinance imposing the jail’s name as BBRC, Nemeño asked that the council sponsor a new one adopting the new name.
Fernandez had said that no records exist in City Hall on how the BBRC, built in 1975 during the term of mayor Eulogio Borres Sr., got its name. (RHM)
