Negros Occidental is 81.36 percent drug-cleared, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said.

At the 3rd Quarter Joint Provincial Peace and Order Council and Provincial Anti-Drug Abuse Council Meeting on Thursday, September 5, PDEA-NegOcc provincial officer Cornelio Espartero, Jr. reported that 489 out of 601 barangays in Negros Occidental, excluding capital Bacolod City, have been declared as drug-cleared villages.

Eleven out of 32 local government units (LGUs) in the province have been declared as 100 percent drug-free, Espartero said.

These include the municipalities of E.B. Magalona, Candoni, La Castellana, Manapla, Moises Padilla, Pulupandan, and Valladolid, as well as the cities of Victorias, Bago, Silay, and Sipalay.

Espartero said nine villages in the towns of Binalbagan, Calatrava, Isabela, Pontevedra, and San Enrique applied to be declared free from the influence of illegal drugs.

Govenor Eugenio Jose Lacson, who was also at the joint meeting, said there are more drug-cleared areas now in Negros Occidental, although their target is really to go 100 percent.

Lacson said he wants the PDEA and the Philippine National Police to make barangays in Negros Occidental drug-cleared the same way other provinces in Western Visayas have done.

Western Visayas is 93.2 percent drug-cleared, PDEA said.

Iloilo province is 99.59 percent drug-cleared, followed by Capiz (93.45 percent), Iloilo City (52.78 percent), and Bacolod (34.43 percent), data showed.

The provinces of Aklan, Guimaras and Antique are 100 percent drug-cleared.

Drug source

Meanwhile, Bacolod City Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez directed the Bacolod City Police Office (BCPO) to determine the source of illegal drugs in the city.

“Our police should find out and investigate the source of illegal drugs in Bacolod City,” Benitez said.

This, after Lieutenant Colonel Jovie Espenido revealed during a House of Representatives quad-committee hearing last week that the source of the illegal drugs was from Bacolod.

BCPO director Colonel Joeresty Coronica said they should double their efforts to address the proliferation of illegal substances.

Coronica said BCPO had a recent accomplishment in their campaign against illegal drugs, as they confiscated an estimated P7 million worth of illegal substances in various drug buy-bust operations.

He said he didn’t believe in Espenido’s statement, suspecting that the supply of illegal drugs in Bacolod was sourced from Luzon.

“There’s no shabu laboratory in Bacolod and most of the supply was from Luzon,” Coronica said./WDJ