Government losing civilian informers in war vs crime syndicates

Civilian informers on drug syndicates are an endangered species because they feel they are not being compensated enough.

"Our informers are demoralized. They now realize that they are not fully compensated in their effort so they would rather look for other jobs to support their family," an official of the Philippine National Police’s Narcotics Group (Narcgroup) told The STAR yesterday.

The civilian informers being utilized by the Narcgroup to go after Chinese drug syndicates have started packing up after realizing that government’s promise of rewards was an empty one.

The use of civilian informers led to the dismantling of the Pasig City and San Juan shabu laboratories and the seizure of large quantities of the drug during Narcgroup’s buy-bust operations from November last year to April.

But the Narcgroup informers started feeling "it’s not worth it" when the government committed a "blunder" by not fully compensating their fellow informer, a certain Jedi, who led police to three successful operations.

A former member of a big-time drug syndicate, Jedi has risked his life and that of his family to work for the government in the war against syndicates, with an eye on the promised rewards.

And his dream of a better future nearly came true when he led Narcgroup agents last January in the dismantling of the San Juan shabu laboratory, the most sophisticated to be raided in the country. The factory could produce up to 1,000 kilos of shabu monthly, police said.

However, to Jedi’s dismay, the National Drug Law Enforcement and Prevention Coordinating Center (NDLEPCC) computed a mere P126,468.37 as his reward for the San Juan raid, a far cry from his own computation of P5 million.

The reward for the Pasig City and Manila drug haul was forfeited because of a mere technicality.

Retired police Director Miguel Coronel, former executive director of the NDLEPCC, clarified that they computed the reward based on the recovery of 812.8 grams of shabu and raw materials confiscated at the shabu lab.

The basis they used, Coronel said, was the same as that in computing the reward for the Quezon City lab, whose informer received more than P800,000 from no less than President Arroyo at Malacañang. The Quezon City informer received his reward in a record time of less than a month.

Coronel said Jedi’s computation of the more than P5 million reward due him is erroneously based on the price of Ephedrine HCL, a weight-loss medicine.

"No shabu manufacturer will ever use it (Ephedrine HCL) because of its prohibitive cost," stressed Coronel. He explained that the precursor of ephedrine that is naturally extracted from the Ephedra plant costs only $60 per kilogram, according to the UN office in Bangkok, Thailand.