Cotabato City mayor attends to needs of inmates after jail riot

COTABATO CITY -- Mayor Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi has provided detainees at the city jail with amenities she promised during a riot last month, the local government unit here said Monday.The 382 detainees staged a three-hour noise barrage on Christmas Eve over security policies depriving them of food brought in by visitors, the lack of drinking water and beds in their cells.Halima Satol-Ibrahim, city information officer, said Monday the mayor fulfilled more than a week ago her commitment to provide the city jail with water pump and a containment tank, wall fans and larger industrial-type fans for its mess hall.Electricians have installed new lighting facilities in the old jail while carpenters fixed the dilapidated beds of inmates after the incident, she added.Guiani-Sayadi was elected vice mayor in May 2016 and assumed four months later as local chief executive after the death from an illness of her older sibling, Mayor Japal Guiani, Jr.Guiani-Sayadi led the peaceful efforts of ending the riot at the jail last month, the first ever in the almost 60-year history of Cotabato City.The city government has a plan to build a bigger city jail with basic amenities and worship sites at the Malagapas District here.The existing city jail here beside a station of the Bureau of Fire Protection was originally designed only for 50 inmates.There are 382 detainees presently clamped down in facility, mostly being prosecuted for violation of the Philippine Dangerous Drugs Act.Dozens of drug offenders were arrested in the city in the past six months by a special law enforcement group of combined policemen, soldiers and barangay officials led by Guiani-Sayadi in support of the anti-narcotics campaign of President Rodrigo Duterte.The mayor is the presiding chairperson of the inter-agency Cotabato City peace and order council.