AT least 289 barangay officials are involved in illegal drug activity on the list of President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency said Thursday.
In a radio interview over dzMM, director general Aaron Aquino said out of the 289 narco-politicians, 143 of them are barangay executives, while 146 are barangay councilors.
“But the number could be more than that based on our own watch list, the so-called national drug information system,” he said.
Most of those involved are from Mindanao, he said.
He said 30 percent of the more than 42,000 barangays in the country do not have a barangay anti-drug abuse council.
While 70 percent of the 42,000 barangays have their own BADACs, many of them are “non-functional,” he told the interview, referring to the Barangay Anti-Drug Abuse Council.
“Those from Mindanao have been saying they could not create the councils because their place was a war-torn area, and that there were chaos [everywhere], and had no peace and order,” he noted.
Citing a series of previous buy-bust operations in various places on different occasions, the PDEA chief said they uncovered the remittance of drug money through a commercial bank account of a business company.
“Our assessment here is that the drug activity is being run by a big-time narco-politician in Mindanao. He is also, at the same time, considered a narco-terrorist,” he said.
He said the government had not been remiss in advising the local officials to help fight illegal drugs.
“We cannot blame ignorance of the law as an excuse why there is failure to activate the anti-drug abuse council. There are directives and [even a] memorandum [to create such]. There is a [deliberate] effort not to do so over the [possible] involvement of a barangay chairperson or a councilor [in the illegal drug activity],” he said.
According to Aquino, he and the officials of the Department of Interior and Local Government met last week and came up with a “challenge” to order all of the 42,000 barangays to activate anti-drug abuse councils and reactivate “non-functional” ones within 30 days.
He called on Undersecretary Martin Diño to suspend those officials who would continue to ignore the order.
Aquino earlier vowed to wipe illegal drug trade by 2022 in all barangays.
He said: “We have to stop the main source of the drugs [coming in from the seaports, airports, seaside smuggling and the local manufacture at drug laboratories].
“If we cannot, how can we stop it? We are thinking of ways, such as the amendment of the law to freeze immediately the assets of the rich and big drug lords, who remain scot-free.”