MALACAñANG said Tuesday the village captains and mayors in the areas with a high incidence of illegal drug use will be probed for “serious neglect of duty.”
Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella also said there were plans to create more regional drug rehabilitation centers to address the overcrowding in the rehabilitation centers.
He made the statement even as incoming Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said the House of Representatives will not conduct any probes on the increasing cases of summary executions of those involved in the distribution of illegal drugs.
“Let the NBI handle the case and allow Congress to attend to matters that will benefit the people, such as the budget deliberation,” Alvarez said.
Abella said the Interior Department, which has jurisdiction over all local governments, was planning a memorandum of agreement with LGU officials to authorize any probe by the national government on the drug situation in the communities and to find those liable for neglecting their duty.
“A memorandum, a proposed memorandum to barangay captains and mayors in places with high incidence of drugs,” Abella told reporters.
He said doing so would help LGU executives initiate the fight against illegal drugs in their communities.
More than 8,000 villages in the country are plagued with the drug menace, according to data from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
It says around 20.51 percent or 8,629 villages out of the 42,065 villages nationwide have drug-related cases.
Metro Manila is the most drug-affected area with 92.10 percent of its villages affected, followed by Southern Tagalog at 33.78 percent.
Based on the results of the anti-drug operations in 2014, the street value of shabu is P2,000 to P10,000 per gram, while marijuana sells at P18 to P300 per gram, depending on the area of transaction and the quality of the drug sold.