Bilibid lifts ban on visitors

MANILA, Philippines — After a 22-day “lockdown,” the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) is allowing relatives of inmates to visit them at the maximum security compound of the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa starting today.

But the BuCor is giving the inmates less time with visiting loved ones.

The BuCor, in an advisory, said it would implement a schedule of visit for prisoners on a “per quadrant” basis to accommodate visitors in the heavily-guarded maximum security compound.

Inmates may only be visited twice a week from Wednesday to Sunday for one and a half hours at most, depending on which of the four quadrants (north, east, west, south) their cells are located.

No visitors allowed

No visits are allowed on Mondays and Tuesdays, when most of the other pending cases of inmates are being heard.

For example, a convict housed in Building 1, which is located in north quadrant, can only be visited on Wednesdays and Saturdays, from 7:30 to 9 a.m.

Previously, visiting hours started at 7 a.m. from Wednesdays to Fridays and at 8 a.m. for the rest of the week. These could be extended during the holiday season, when there was an influx of inmate visits.

A little too late

The lifting of the ban came more than three weeks after BuCor chief Gerald Bantag ordered a “lockdown” to give way to the demolition of illegal structures’ and crackdown on drugs and other contraband.

But the lifting was a little too late, lamented Kapatid, a group advocating prisoners’ rights.

“It should have come sooner, not when more and more inmates were left to die,” Kapatid spokesperson Fides Lim said.

At least 29 inmates have died of various ailments from Oct. 9 to 25, when visits were barred during the demolition operations for “security reasons.”

“I just want to remind General Bantag that NBP is a prison facility and not a cemetery,” Lim said.

The families were “very worried” that the ailing inmates might also die in their cells since they were not getting enough medical attention.

Bantag, however, assured them the inmates were getting medical attention. He also said a number of inmates had died because “they were already suffering of life-threatening medical issues.”

On Tuesday, members of Kapatid trooped to NBP Gate 1 to press Bantag to lift the “lockdown” and reinstate the inmates’ right to receive visitors.

Humane conditions

Wives of political prisoners, including Dolores Pangilinan of Samahan ng mga Pamilya na Nasa Death Row, said they were not allowed to visit their husbands in Building 11 of the NBP compound during the “lockdown.”

Pangilinan and four other wives of inmates decried the destruction of the inmates’ sleeping quarters.

“We are not resisting changes in the NBP, but these should be made while maintaining proper and humane conditions for inmates,” said Pangilinan, whose husband has gone for more than two weeks without his maintenance medicine for high blood. —WITH A REPORT FROM MARIEJO S. RAMOS