MOTORCYCLE courier delivery services in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) will hold a dialogue to prevent riders from being involved in illegal drugs smuggling activities.
Gil Castro, PDEA-CAR director, said the dialogue will inform riders on what effective action must be done by courier delivery services to prevent illegal drugs from being delivered.
"There are instances that illegal drug smugglers use courier services but we already have a memorandum of agreement with them, which allows us to conduct a random sweeping on their parcels. We are now in the planning process to meet our riders for a dialogue so that in cases where suspected illegal parcels are to be delivered using their courier service, it would not be the rider who does not have any information about the contents of the parcel that should answer for it but on who sent the parcel and to whom will the parcel be brought to," Castro said.
Aside from the use of the courier services, PDEA-CAR also monitored the use of online trading as a way of distributing illegal drugs in the region.
But based on its operational accomplishments, PDEA has adopted to the modus of drug pushers where riders have been arrested, vehicles with food pass markings intercepted, and the use of courier services wherein personnel have been trained to detect questionable parcels for delivery.
PDEA-CAR recognizes the efficiency of established border control checkpoints in and out of the region to be one of the most effective measures that led to various arrest and seizures of illegal drugs.
"A big accomplishment of PDEA and Police Regional Office-Cordillera with regards to illegal drugs is that of our border control lockdown being implemented by the various local government units in the region. One commendable LGU is Baguio City because it is here we seized a big percentage of illegal drugs, aside from Kalinga and Mountain Province that have the best border control manned by dedicated police personnel who always alerts us," Castro added.