IN WESTERN VISAYAS
Drug suspects decry slow justice
By Carla Gomez
Visayas Bureau
First Posted 20:30:00 01/08/2009
Filed Under: Illegal drugs, Judiciary (system of justice), Police
BACOLOD CITY, Philippines -- Justice has been slow for suspected drug peddlers arrested by operatives of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and Philippine National Police (PNP) in Western Visayas.
The latest PDEA records show that 2,698 drug cases filed since almost a decade ago in the region are still pending in various courts.
Superintendent Roybel Sanchez, PDEA regional director, attributed the clogging of drug cases in courts to lack of judges.
Bacolod City, with 943 drug cases pending in courts, is next to Iloilo with 973 cases, while there are 301 pending cases in the rest of Negros Occidental province, according to PDEA records released Wednesday by Sanchez.
Sanchez reported that the PDEA and PNP arrested 322 of the 841 persons linked to drugs in Region 6 in 2008, 142 of them included in the agencies’ drug watch list.
Of the 322 arrested, 139 were apprehended in Bacolod City and 115 in Negros Occidental, PDEA records also showed.
PDEA records identified five local drug groups operating in Western Visayas, two of them in Bacolod City and Negros Occidental.
Of the 424 drug-affected barangay (villlages) in the region, 68 are in Negros Occidental and nine are in Bacolod City, Sanchez said.
He said they had not monitored the presence of any shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride) laboratory in Region 6, although they got reports of the cultivation of marijuana plants in pots, Sanchez said.
According to Sanchez, PDEA is intensifying its drug-awareness symposiums in schools and villages.
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