Cavite town offers 10-ha land for drug rehab center

SAN PEDRO CITY—The municipal government of Rosario, Cavite province, is offering a 10.2-hectare parcel of land that it owns as a site for what could be the country’s biggest drug rehabilitation center.

The currently idle land, located behind a mall in Barangay Tejeros in Rosario, was acquired by the government, through the Privatization and Management Office, after it was foreclosed several years ago.

In 2011, the national government saw the land as a possible site for the transfer of the National Center for Mental Health, currently in Mandaluyong City, but the plan did not materialize.

“With a single EO (Executive Order) from the President, the land could be used instead to build a drug rehabilitation center,” said former mayor and now Rosario Vice Mayor Jose Ricafrente Jr. on Friday.

It was also Ricafrente who earlier rolled out the so-called “cage of change” where arrested drug pushers are placed and paraded in a shame campaign around the town.

Ricafrente said thousands of drug dependents in the town have surrendered to authorities since the war on drugs was launched by the Duterte administration.

They had been given a chance to change and to get jobs, said the vice mayor.

The Department of Health and several local government units have pointed out the lack of facilities to treat drug addicts, who come from mostly poor families and can’t afford the costs of treatment in private rehabilitation centers.

Ricafrente said the offer to use Rosario’s 10.2-hectare land as site of a drug rehab center would be submitted to President Duterte.

He said building a new and bigger state-run drug facility could solve the problem of where to bring hundreds of thousands of drug users.