Gov’t, church to jointly run 20 drug rehab centers

It is one of the strongest critics of President Duterte’s deadly war on drugs, but the Catholic Church has agreed to work with the government in putting up at least 20 drug rehabilitation centers in Metro Manila.

This was according to a ranking official of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), who on Tuesday disclosed the emerging partnership.

“I met with (Manila Auxiliary) Bishop (Broderick) Pabillo two or three weeks ago and we agreed that we should work hand in hand to fast track the establishment of rehab centers that are church-based,” Assistant Interior Secretary Epimaco Densing III said.

“The parish itself will be the rehabilitation center,” Densing said, adding that the Church would provide the staff while the government could fund it through the barangay antidrug councils.

The “outpatient” rehab centers would target “90 percent of the 1.1 million drug surrenderers” who are still “experimenting or taking drugs once a week or once a month are not yet hooked.”

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The patients could be identified through the lists drawn up by the police and barangay officials. “We will get the list from them. We will really go to (the drug users’ houses). We will have a strategy to … ask the surrenderer to (go to) the center.”

An outpatient can visit a center three or four times a week with the help of family or friends. Department of Health officers will check if he or she requires further treatment in a government rehab center as an inpatient.

The Catholic Church has been vocal against extrajudicial killings (EJKs) being linked to the drug war, organizing mass actions and putting up posters in parishes reminding about the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shall not kill.”

“We will set that aside,” Densing said. “That is why our first meeting was important. I met with them (Church leaders) for almost an hour and a half because of their concerns about these ‘EJKs.’”

“I explained that, generally, we are a country which upholds human rights as a state policy. There are no government-sanctioned killings,” he said.

“After I made my own pitch, some of them were a little quiet, but at the end there were two or three who said that, in fairness, under the present government, their communities now seem peaceful,” the DILG official added.