(from left) NBP Supt. Venancio Tesoro, Justice Secretary Leila De Lima and BuCor Chief Jesus Bucayu. FILE PHOTO
Where did I go wrong?
Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director Franklin Jesus Bucayu posed this question after critics have demanded that he relinquish his post following the discovery of illegal drug operations and contraband at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).
“I can resign anytime. I serve at the pleasure of the Secretary (of Justice Leila de Lima). But what did I do wrong?” Bucayu said in a phone interview with the Inquirer yesterday.
The official said he has always been at the forefront of effecting changes in the BuCor and in the seven prison facilities supervised by the agency, including the NBP.
He said in the one year and eight months he has been in his post, a number of “reforms” have been implemented, among them the BuCor-wide computerization of inmates’ profiles, the establishment of a BuCor internal affairs unit, a Special Weapons and Tactics unit and an investigation unit and the release of 81 inmates who were still in jail but had already actually served their sentences.
He said it was also under his watch that the BuCor Operating Manual that regulates the conduct of the agency’s personnel was made to undergo revisions.
Bucayu said he was not a “magician” who could make “decades-old” problems disappear overnight.
“When we got in, there was no organization…We found out the organization was not running so I asked, why is this? That was what I was doing here—reforms,” he said.
He said even before the first raid in the NBP led by De Lima, he already ordered the reshuffle of its personnel.
The recently sacked Supt. Roberto Rabo, Bucayu said, was the fifth to head the NBP under his watch.
He said he had also been proposing the construction of a “small-scale facility” within the NBP compound that will enable the segregation of “high-risk” convicts.
The construction, he said, was already in the bidding process and is expected to be completed in three to four months’ time.
“Aren’t [critics] thankful that these [reforms] are being done under my watch? You should look at the indications,” said Bucayu, who also helped organize the first De Lima-led raid and a subsequent one in the NBP.
Bucayu acknowledged that his position entailed “policy-setting and supervision,” but said this last one “depends on [the reports] on the ground.”
He said inspecting dormitories and kubol, for example, may already be done by the superintendent.
“I am not the NBP. This is only one of the [facilities] I am supervising,” he said.
“We have been doing something…That’s why I can go anytime, but it’s just not nice to leave under the circumstance when I am made to be the problem,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bucayu said NBP inmates could still surrender contraband in drop boxes located in the prison even after De Lima’s Dec. 24 deadline.
Based on the feedback he received from newly installed NBP head Supt. Richard Schwarzkopf Jr., he said the drop boxes have been filled with “guns, deadly weapons and communication and drugs paraphernalia.”
Bucayu said the drop boxes would all be opened in front of the justice secretary.
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