ZAMBOANGA CITY — The Zamboanga City Reformatory Center disclosed on Thursday that it has released from the facility about 72 persons deprived of liberty through an intensified paralegal support service.
ZCRC warden J/Supt Xavier Solda said that his office have released the PDLs last month as part of their program to decongest the facility.
“We are hoping that more than a hundred more will be released in the next two weeks as we continue our coordination with the courts to decongest our facility which is now 1,064 percent congested,” Solda said.
“We will adopt measures to improve the situation of our PDLs here in our facility and one of the measures we are adopting now is to extend them para-legal support,” he added.
The ZCRC warden also said that they coordinated with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency here in conducting random drug testing to PDLs with their cell leaders and no one was found positive.
“We will continue the conduct of surprise drug tests among personnel and randomly select PDL who will undergo the test to make sure that our facility is drug-free,” Solda said.
Meanwhile, the ZCRC has launched the Green Zamboanga Project which aims to establish a jail nursery for vegetables in the facility as a source of income for PDLs on top of other newly created livelihood programs in the facility.
Solda added that in terms of health support, the facility continuously monitors sickly and malnourished PDL including senior citizens who were enrolled under the Facility Nutritional Support Program.
Meantime, Bureau of Jail Management and Penology jail director Allan Iral has lauded the efforts of the new leadership of ZCRC in the anti-illegal drugs campaign and the expansion of welfare and development programs for PDLs under its care.
“We take cognizance of the intensified anti-drug campaign and welfare programs for persons deprived of liberty in our biggest facility in Western Mindanao,” Iral said.
With Jing Villamente