A MISSION LIKE NO OTHER

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

In my forty years’ professional career as a development worker, being involved either as consultant or technical officer for thirty-two UN-funded projects most of which planned and implemented in Bohol, I have never felt more challenged than this time with this current advocacy to address a problem which impacts severely on family welfare and local development and yet it is still to merit respectable mileage in terms of public interest and support.  Indeed, in many ways, this advocacy to help address the drug menace in our midst is a mission like no other I have done in the past.

After writing nine out of twenty columns the past few months on this prevalent drug abuse problem, I have not received any response from readers at all except for the joke that the picture which accompanies the column must have been taken some ten or fifteen years ago.

Which is not far from the truth actually. My wife was the one who selected it and she might not want readers to know I am twenty years older than her!

As I indicated in previous columns, the responses so far to the drug abuse problem are not adequate nor comprehensive enough to generate confidence that all aspects have been considered. The buy-busts operations and the shooting of drug personalities in full-view of the public with pictures of bodies riddled with bullets may succeed as good psywar operations to scare off drug pushers and their handlers, but the trade-off is the widespread negative perception about the image of the province and its regard for the rule of law.

I am puzzled why the Government, the Church, the business sector and civil society organizations are quite hesitant and timid to complement police operations with humanitarian and Christian caring for the victims of drug abuse and their suffering families. There is no moral outrage at all about violation of human rights and the harm done to families and the community as a whole by the proliferation of the illegal drug trade.  

It looks like the prevailing bias is to shoot down pushers and to get the drug lords who are their financiers. The businessmen have said it’s about time that the police get the big fish, not the small fries. The police authorities have announced it will heed the advice. The Government says no drug lords will be spared. Well, let’s fast-track things so people will not say it’s just a role play before the narco-state becomes a reality in this country.

On the matter of having a drug rehabilitation center cum mental facility, nobody has made any announcement about plans and budgetary estimates to implement their plans. The Diocese of Tagbilaran  says drop-in and drug rehabilitation centers are not within their priority. The Provincial Government has a task force planning reportedly for these facilities. We have yet to hear what exactly they plan to do.

Likewise we have yet to hear from the business, women and youth sectors and the NGOs what they are thinking about faced with the fact that more than 50% of crimes committed in the province are drug-related. Perhaps they are all waiting for their cue from the Government. This attitude is understandable since it’s a highly sensitive issue and, given the number of casualties in the drug war, these people may be afraid they may end up being shot themselves. Wow, what a province, what a country!

Here is where we need the media to perform its investigative role and unearth the reality behind the “terrorism of gossip,” as Pope Francis so graphically put it. In the absence of a database on the actual situation of drug addiction in Bohol, we urge the media to venture out to do some interviewing of sources in Tagbilaran City and the municipalities and describe what is really going on as far as drug distribution and use is concerned. This is not a question of skills, but more of guts. Dagohoy and his courage must not be a casualty in our inability to act at this time of our history.  

Our friends from media must have heard it that you can walk in any town in Bohol, talk to local officials or some residents, including hotel staff and tricycle drivers, and they will tell you the  exact locations and persons where to buy shabu. Perhaps the media will take the initiative to do some leg work and in the finest tradition of Philippine journalism, produce a detailed and no non-sense report on the extent of drug addiction in the province. Or they can interview some families and depict what they have to endure in the absence of a drug rehabilitation facility in the province.

For our part at Bohol Local Development Foundation (BLDF), we will persevere in our efforts to get support for our advocacy to help young drug abuse victims from indigent families to get quality treatment services. We believe this will help prevent more serious social problems to occur in the future. This is probably our last hurrah, indeed a mission like no other, in a long journey to serve our people.

We will also continue to engage young people, particularly the out-of-school youth, to acquire skills that will enable them to engage in livelihood activities and thus prevent them from being enticed to try illegal drugs to provide a convenient escape from the harsh reality that they are a burden to their family and the community.

BLDF will soon launch an advocacy and fund campaign to support its new initiative, the Bohol Youth Livelihood and Drug Rehabilitation Project, to complement what we have been proposing for the last six months or so - the establishment of a drug rehabilitation center cum mental health institution, in the province.

This project is part of current efforts to help address a serious social problem which affects hundreds of households in Bohol, most of whom cannot afford to send affected family members to similar institutions in Cebu, Davao, Manila and Tagaytay. The draft rationale and objectives for these fund raising initiative are as follows:

-Recent events tend to show that the province has become a major transshipment point, if not primary destination, for illegal drugs and that drug pushers and their victims have increased quite significantly over the last few years.

-Drug-related killings and other heinous crimes, such as rape (in one case, a mother was raped by her own son who is a drug addict); physical assault, theft and robbery have become common in the province as reported in local papers.  More than a dozen drug pushers have been shot dead or wounded in broad daylight, in busy streets of Tagbilaran City and in the towns, in a province which used to have a reputation as being crime-free and among the country’s most peaceful places.

-More than 50% of crimes committed in the province are reportedly drug-related. Alcoholism is getting to be rampant particularly among the youth.  Mental health cases have also been noted to be on the rise. 

-The province with a population of more than 1.2 million has no drug rehabilitation center nor a mental health facility to cope with these behavior-related problems. Family members affected with substance abuse and other behavioral addictions, mental illness, adjustment disorders and other psychological problems have to be brought to Cebu, Davao, Manila and Tagaytay City in Cavite province for their treatment.

-Indigent families in the province have difficulty seeking treatment for their affected members on account of the high costs involved. If untreated, this increasing number of individuals with various forms of addiction will lead to more crimes in the future.

-An urgent need exists to provide livelihood opportunities to households affected by the problems related to drug abuse and mental health to further ensure family support during treatment and post-recovery. Engagement of clients in livelihood activities can also be part of treatment and rehabilitation to further ensure reintegration into normal community and family life.

-Family and community involvement is needed for the effective prevention, pre-treatment, treatment and after-care phases of drug demand reduction/elimination to ensure early detection, diagnosis, appropriate intervention, and full family and community reintegration after treatment and rehabilitation.

-Psychology students in Bohol, who can play a vital role in drug rehabilitation programs, have no access to clinical training and supervision in the province, and so they have to spend more money to go to institutions outside Bohol for their practicum and clinical internship training as required under their curriculum.

The fund drive seeks to achieve the following objectives:

-To provide skills among the youth, particularly the out-of-school youth, to enable them to get employed, undertake livelihood activities, or to continue their schooling through the Alternative Learning System (ALS) or any of TESDA-accredited training institutions;

-To establish demonstration sites or projects for scaling up Informal Employment and Sustainable Livelihood among families with out-of-school youth and/or drug abuse victims;

-To  provide access to treatment services to drug abuse victims from indigent families and thus prevent social problems arising from drug abuse;

-To implement activities related to creating public awareness about drug abuse, the need for counselling and other pre-treatment services in partnership with the Government, NGOs, academic institutions and other CSOs and target communities; and

-To monitor and evaluate the progress made by former drug abuse clients to ensure post-treatment are provided for their full recovery and integration with their families and local communities. Further details will be announced in our website, www.bohollocaldev.org .For comments or feedbacks: email us at npestelos@gmail.com / info@bohollocaldev.org 

Let’s support this initiative and do our part in preventing the deterioration of our way of life in this our beloved province. #Boholivelihooddrugrehab

NMP/27 May 2015/3.14 p.m.