THE Davao City Anti-Drug Abuse Council (Cadac) reported that around 200 firms in the city underwent training for drug-free workplaces in compliance with the city ordinance.
Concepcion Domag of Cadac said on Wednesday, July 10, that to date, some representatives of business establishments enrolled themselves for training on how to conduct random drug testing among their employees and formulate a three-year drug-free workplace treatment and prevention program as part of the requirement before acquiring or renewing their business permit.
"For the preventive program of Davao City, the first thing that we are really promoting is the drug-free workplace programs based on city ordinance," she said.
City Ordinance 0506-13 is an ordinance requiring all companies employing more than 10 persons to have an anti-drug abuse program or a drug-free workplace policy. They must have a program to educate their employees, their families, and the communities on the ill-effects of illegal drugs, how to treat drug addiction and how to recover from or manage it.
It is part of the requirement in the renewal of business permits starting 2020.
"So far, we have almost 200 companies pa lang who have undergone the basic requirement which is training. During the training we helped them in the compliance process because it's not just an ordinary random drug testing," Domag said.
The drug testing that will be done by the firms shall be coordinated with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (Pdea) and anchored on the program of the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) which is the drug-free workplace.
"They have to submit their drug-free workplace policy and thirdly, they also have to submit their three-year drug-free workplace plan as basis for the monitoring in which Cadac is in charge of," she added.
In Davao City, there are 40,000 establishments that were divided them into three categories to facilitate the smooth implementation of the ordinance.
The first group is the service-oriented business establishments which are mandated to comply with the ordinance in 2020.