DEPUTY Speaker Gwendolyn Garcia delivered on Wednesday her privilege speech, recounting how her success in transforming the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) has been overturned by her successor in the Capitol, Governor Hilario Davide III.
Armed with a nine-minute documentary, Garcia detailed how CPDRC became a "jail extraordinaire" and source of national pride under her watch.
Among the achievements she narrated are the banning of weapons, cigarettes, and cash inside the cells; preempting overcrowding; speeding up of pending cases of inmates; and the use of dance as a form of rehabilitation, a by-product of which is a viral video hailed as “Cebu’s Dancing Inmates.”
“Yet here we are, nine years after the Dancing Inmates shot to global fame and wowed the world, and only three years since [Davide] became governor, and the CPDRC is making headlines once more; alas, for all the wrong reasons,” Garcia said.
According to Garcia, the raid on the provincial jail last August 13 validated her worry that it has become a “drug den,” citing an inmate being found in possession of drugs, cash, and debit cards.
“Furthermore, in a span of five or so weeks, more than ten inmates have died, most of them succumbing to cardiac arrest due to pneumonia. Health experts attribute the deaths to overcrowding in the provincial jail,” Garcia added.
The lawmaker tagged Davide’s appointee to the penitentiary, Marco Toral, as an “ex-convict out on appeal” from a life sentence due to drug-related crimes. Toral has since resigned as Capitol consultant on jail matters.
“Seriously? Obviously Toral had applied this “experience” in making sure all of the momentum gains we’ve made with the CPDRC are erased, completely wiped out,” she said.
Garcia also lambasted Davide’s inclusion in the Department of Interior and Local Government’s Honor List of Governors who battled drug in their respective provinces.
“A number of the governors on the list are my friends, and they deserve to be there. What they do not deserve though is to be listed alongside someone so undeserving, so unworthy…that his inclusion renders the entire list suspect,” Garcia lamented.
According to her, Davide must be made to answer “because Cebuanos deserve an explanation.”
“He simply cannot skirt the issue by suggesting that the provincial jail’s management be transferred to the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology. This is a desperate attempt at deflecting this grave issue,” she said.
Garcia concluded her speech by saying she will be filing a resolution to probe “into the glaring deficiencies and gross mismanagement and administration of the CPDRC." (Sunnex)