Meet the ‘jail bakers’

LIVELIHOOD TRAINING The Pampanga Provincial Jail provides inmates livelihood and skills training so they will become productive citizens once they have served their sentences and rejoined mainstream society.

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO — Pan de sal, cheese roll, Spanish bread, hopia, banana loaf, cheese bread, egg pie, chocolate brownies and ensaymada.

Two inmates and four freed detainees at the Pampanga Provincial Jail churn out these bread and pastries almost daily to meet demands, including phone-in orders.

Around here, they are called “jail bakers.” The name was picked in a contest before the bakery opened in October 2015.

Daryl Manalang-Sanchez, general manager of the Pampanga Provincial Jail Employees Producers Cooperative (PPJEPC), said they started using the brand name “Jail Bakers” in packaging the bread varieties in 2018.

PPJEPC funds this livelihood project, said Sanchez, who coined the name and won P500 for it.

“I thought it is a fitting brand because the inmates bake inside the jail,” Sanchez said.

“The idea is not to draw pity for the detainees. It is the quality of the products that makes good sales,” she added.

The bakers are proud of their products because, in their own words, manyaman la (these are delicious).

Reformation center

“The secret [of the products’] good taste is in how they regard their work. They tell me they knead [the flour] with love,” Sanchez said. “The bakery makes [the inmates] productive while they’re confined in jail.”

To those who had been released, the bakery is a sort of reformation center.

They don’t want to return to their communities because they fear they would be drawn again to illegal drugs as users or peddlers.

OVEN FRESH An inmate at the Pampanga Provincial Jail in the City of San Fernando ensures that every loaf of bread that comes out of the prison bakery’s oven will satisfy customers. -PHOTOS BY GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

“Unscrupulous men in uniform ordered to meet quotas may arrest them again. They persist with lives without drugs,” she said.

The cheese rolls, coming in 12 pieces per box at P250, have been ordered by balikbayan in the United States and Canada. These can be stored in the freezer for a month and microwaved for 10 seconds before serving.

Hope for prisoners

This story of hope began on July 14, 2015, when the cooperative of 38 members was registered with the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA).

As employees of the provincial government, they wanted to augment their income and help the prisoners at the same time.

After organizing a series of training on baking, making soaps and perfumes, meat processing and banana chip cooking, and hearing out the preferences of the inmates, PPJEPC opted to try baking.

SWEET REFORMATION A group of current and former inmates in Pampanga finds sweet reformation as they try their hands at baking, through the help of the Pampanga Provincial Jail Employees Producers Cooperative, to have a source of income and meet their families’ needs.

Having only P38,000 as startup capital and collecting only P100 in monthly dues, PPJEPC borrowed P500,000 through an interest-free loan guaranteed by the warden, retired Police Col. Edwin Mangaliman, who is also PPJEPC chair.

They bought equipment and built the bakery within the jail compound using the loan. They got supplies on consignment.

In July, the cooperative had trimmed down the loan balance to P53,000.

The gross sales last year, as reported to the CDA, reached P1 million.

Dividends

“Our members can be getting dividends next year,” Sanchez said.

The cooperative pays its own electricity and water bills. Land lease amounts to P1,920 monthly to the provincial capitol.

Before the Supreme Court downgraded his case to simple estafa in 2017, real estate developer Delfin Lee helped in designing the coop’s marketing program.

Monthly allowance

The 2,229 detainees (1,964 men, 265 women) are regular buyers of the bakery’s pan de sal, which costs P5 apiece. A few inmates make money by selling these with cheese or peanut butter.

Sales are better on Tuesdays up to Sundays when relatives of inmates visit.

The “jail bakers” get a monthly allowance of between P5,000 and P8,000 taken from commissions.

The standing joke in the still nameless bakery is that it should be named “5-11.”

The numbers refer to the provisions for the use and sale of illegal drugs that are prohibited under the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 (Republic Act No. 9165).

Pamela Ocampo, for one, stepped out of prison in October 2018 after serving six years for drug charges. This polio-stricken single mother has been working as a supervisor at the bakery for three years now.

The monthly allowance she earns goes to supporting her 13-year-old daughter’s education.

Ocampo, 43, lives in the barracks, feeling “safer” there than in her village in Lubao town.

Elmer Tabora, 45, used to be a baker until he was jailed for drug charges. Released on June 29 after three years of incarceration, he continues to work at the bakery.

BRAND Bread and pastries produced by inmates at the provincial jail in Pampanga province are sold under the brand “Jail Bakers.”

“I like the confines of the jail. I’m at ease here,” said Tabora, who is known here as “Barang.”

He spends his allowance on the daily fare of his two children, one of whom is in college. His wife Flerida gets to earn, too, by selling brownies on occasions.

Reynaldo dela Cruz, 38, was freed on Sept. 30 last year but since half of his life was spent making pastries, he chose to continue baking at the jail.

“Here, I am able to resist temptation [of going back to drugs],” he said, proud that his allowance helped in paying out his only son’s hospitalization for dengue.

Dignity

It is the “dignity of work” that Marissa Concepcion, 37, appreciates the most in helping around the bakery in between coming to court trials.

“What is important is that I get to help raise my two children although I’m in jail,” said Concepcion, who is serving her prison term on drug charges.

One of the bakers, who preferred to be known as Danny, is still on trial for robbery although he has returned the P270,000 he stole from a relative. He tries to apply in baking the same patience he used to have as an upholsterer.

“I am productive here and I’m able to support my three kids,” Danny said.

The proudest of them all is Anthony Pabustan, the chief baker, because his allowance helped his daughter finish a course in education.

“Since June, she has been employed as a high school teacher in a public school,” Pabustan said.

Freed on Dec. 29 last year after spending four years and four days in prison, this former rice trader decided to live with his brother near the jail than return home to San Luis town.

“Getting reformed is already a blessing,” Pabustan said.