SOME Cagayan de Oro City Councilors on Tuesday, September 17, expressed frustration on the “weakened” intervention of the government to drug surrenderers or reformists and questioned if the existing rehabilitation program is still effective.
In his special report, City Councilor Roger Abaday said fewer villages have active Community Based Rehabilitation Program (CBRP), even as some apparently discontinued the program.
Abaday urged the City Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to re-issue a memorandum to barangay officials to reactivate their Anti-Drug Abuse Council and CBRP.
Out of the 80 villages in Cagayan de Oro City, he said only 56 have continued the program against illegal drugs.
The discontinuation of the program has caused some former drug surrenderers to go back to selling and using illegal drugs, he said.
City Councilor Jocelyn Rodriguez, a former village chairwoman, echoed the same sentiment, pointing out that after undergoing rehabilitation, some would relapse.
“Once apprehended, they post a bail and then go home, go back again to selling. Unta, after makagawas sila, they should go to a rehabilitation center to prevent a relapse. Kay kung mobalik sila sa same environment, mobalik gyud sila sa dati kay wala man pud silay income,” Rodriguez said.
City Councilor Ian Mark Nacaya, meanwhile, asked if the intervention used in the past is still effective in today’s situation.
Nacaya said he noted that, those who graduated from CBRP in a particular year are the same batch of people graduating in the same program the following year.
“We cannot expect a different result in the same intervention has been provided in the same community,” Nacaya said.
The city council passed on Monday a resolution urging the DILG to direct villages to step up their anti-illegal drugs campaign.