Mayor Evelio Leonardia led the inauguration and blessing of the Balay Silangan Reformation Facility, a drug reformation center that will be operated by the city government and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), on Wednesday, July 21.
The two-storey Balay Silangan facility in Bacolod City is the first in the Visayas and the second in the country.
The P5-million facility is situated at the back of the Bacolod City Police Office (BCPO) compound, and located on Lacson Extension in Barangay Singcang-Airport.
Project Engineer Amy Tentia said the fund was taken from the City Mayor’s Office (CMO)- Other Structures 2018. Construction started on March 28, 2019 and completed on March 20 2020.
“It is a great thing that it happened here in Bacolod—being a pilot city again. There are only four pilot areas for this project: Nueva Ecija for Luzon, Caloocan City for National Capital Region (NCR), Malungon (in Sarangani province) for Mindanao, and Bacolod City for the Visayas,” Leonardia said.
Balay Silangan is a community-based reformation program aimed at rehabilitating surrendered drug personalities across the country. The program builds temporary shelters to drug offenders with the objective of reforming them into self-sufficient and law-abiding members of society.
“The program is reformatory in nature. It is an alternative intervention for drug personalities who are not users and are not eligible to undergo medical treatment and rehabilitation in facilities supervised by the Department of Health (DOH),” PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino had said in an earlier press statement.
In June 2018, Aquino said in a letter to Leonardia that Bacolod is being considered for the program’s pilot implementation in the Visayas since the city actively supports the government’s anti-drug campaign.
Meanwhile, Leonardia said the city is currently constructing a P35-million Bacolod City Drug Rehabilitation Center in Barangay Alijis.
Of this amount, P15 million is from the Dangerous Drugs Board while the P20 million is from the city government.
The rehabilitation center will cater to drug surrenderers with severe substance use disorder./WDJ