On drug, health woes in Cebu City Jail: City asks warden report, Roxas for more budget

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu City Acting Mayor Edgardo Labella wants City Jail Warden Johnson Calub to submit an investigation report after an inmate was caught with illegal drugs inside the facility.

Maximo Gomez Jr. was caught with six small packs of suspected shabu in his possession Thursday afternoon.

“I want him (Calub) to look into how it (shabu) was able to enter the premises and to immediately submit report to the Police Coordinating Advisory Council,” he said.

Labella, who heads PCAC, reminded the city jail officials to be always “on guard and vigilant,” parti-cularly on illegal drugs.

He earlier said that the cases of almost half of the prisoners in Cebu City Jail are drug-related with 1,058 out of 2,269 prisoners have been caught either as pu-shers or as users.

Calub also reported that 10 to 15 percent of the 1,058 are drug pushers, said Labella.

Meanwhile, the acting mayor yesterday wrote Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, requesting the latter to augment the budget allocated for the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology to address medical issues and food subsidy of inmates.

In his letter, Labella also appealed to Roxas to hire additional plantilla of doctors to attend to the medical needs of the inmates following the report of Sister Joachim Brown of the Missionaries of Hope that there are 36 psychiatric cases inside the jail that are confined and “squashed” inside a 40-square-meter room with inmates with tuberculosis.

“…these jail concerns (congestion, diet and nutrition, and the health care of inmates) have been mounting to the level of serious and life-threatening...,” Labella said.

“Tuberculosis has taken its toll in the city jail; claiming the life, endangering the lives of two others, and compromising 16 more that have been diagnosed with the same illness. It is hard to imagine treatment for all those affected, when BJMP has no doctor assigned in the city’s jail facility, and when the allocation for each inmate’s medicine allocation at P3 per day could hardly pay for one paracetamol,” he added.

According to Labella, the inmates are somewhat being “neglected” with only one medical doctor in service.

“We are asking DILG to help us because we can’t place the city’s sources only to BJMP as we have also other priorities,” he said.

Labella informed Roxas that the failing health of inmates in the city is due to “serious deficiencies in diet,” pointing out that P50 food allowance a day for every inmate is not enough.

The city government has earlier proposed to increase the meal allowance by P10 making it P60 a day or P20 each meal. However, the city is yet to consult the city’s nutrition office as to what kind of healthy diet a P20-meal can cater.

“Without the grant of your office to increase the allocation for food, medical personnel and decongestion, convicts or accused, innocents and criminals alike, but all humans nonetheless, inmates will litera-lly suffer in jail with nothing, under the most inhumane conditions, to live for,” said Labella. —/NSA (FREEMAN)