Maguindanao’s P50 million drug rehab facility rising

MAGUINDANAO - The construction of Central Mindanao’s first ever P50 million drug reformatory center is in full swing and pledges of support to professionalize its operation keep pouring in.The center, now rising in Buluan town, the capital of Maguindanao, is a landmark project of the provincial government in support of the anti-narcotics campaign of President Rodrigo Duterte.Engineer Wahab Tunga, provincial administrator, on Sunday said construction workers are now busy laying the foundations of the permanent shelters and other structures in the reformatory complex.The project is being bankrolled with a P50 million allocation from a P1.7 billion peace and development loan the Land Bank of the Philippines started releasing to the provincial government in tranches early this year.Among the first to commit humanitarian interventions for inmates is the Department of Social Welfare and Development in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).ARMM Vice Gov. Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, the region’s concurrent social welfare secretary, on Sunday said the center, also to function as the new provincial jail of Maguindanao, will boost the government’s effort of providing drug offenders a chance to change for good and become productive citizens. It’s a good project because it will help usher drug users back into their communities as reformed individuals, Lucman said.The facility shall have Muslim and Christian worship sites, function rooms for psycho-social and rehabilitation activities, an open ground for sports engagements and enough spaces for propagation of crops to augment the supply of food for detainees.The project was jointly launched in late November by Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman and Congresswoman Sandra Sema.Also present in the event were members of the Maguindanao league of mayors led by their president, Freddie, a younger brother of Mangudadatu and incumbent mayor of Mangudadatu town in the second district of the province.Hataman and Sema, who is congressional representative of the first district of Maguindanao, also both promised then to help in programs needed to hasten the return to the mainstream of detained drug offenders.The facility is now being built on a tract of farmland, donated by the Mangudadatu family, in southeast of Buluan, the capital of Maguindanao.Maguindanao is a component province of ARMM, whose territory also covers the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.Chief Supt. Agripino Javier, director of the ARMM regional police, earlier said there are Islamic scholars in their ranks who can help provide religious formation lectures to detainees in the now rising drug reformatory center.Now in his third and last term as governor, Mangudadatu, chairman of the provincial peace and order council, said he is grateful to the officials who assured to help his office run the center efficiently.