CEBU CITY – An additional 87 barangays and one municipality in Central Visayas have been declared drug-cleared.
Declared as drug-cleared were 41 barangays from Cebu province, 16 from Bohol, 22 from Negros Oriental, and eight from Cebu City.
These areas earned the drug-cleared status in another round of deliberation by the Regional Oversight Committee on Barangay Drug Clearing (ROCBDC) from April 13 to 14.
The municipality of Basay in Negros Oriental was the first drug-cleared municipality in the province and seventh in the region.
Mayors, Anti-Drug Abuse Council members, and the punong barangays or chairmen of the drug-cleared local government units attended the deliberation virtually.
"While we aim to declare barangays as drug-cleared, the declaration is not the end of the implementation of anti-illegal drug programs. Monitoring of illegal drug activities, the conduct of anti-illegal drug operations, and drug abuse prevention initiatives will continue as the barangays will have to undergo a regular validation process to ensure that they have maintained their drug-cleared status,” said Jigger B. Montallana, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Central Visayas and chairman of the ROCBDC.
Montallana was represented by Director II Benjamin C. Recites III, PDEA-7 deputy regional director, during the deliberation.
To date, 1,531 out of the 3,003 barangays in Central Visayas have been drug-cleared and 116 are drug-free.
The PDEA-7 said the number of drug affected areas in the region is down to 45 percent.
The process of declaring barangays as drug-cleared and drug-free under the Barangay Drug Clearing Program (BDCP) is based on Dangerous Drugs Board Regulation No. 4, Series of 2021.
The resolution describes BDCP as an holistic anti-illegal drug strategy aimed at reducing the drug affectation in the country by taking away drugs from the people, protecting the people from the lures of illegal drugs, and minimizing the impact of the drug problem in the community by integrating the support of duty bearers, local leaders, and other stakeholders.