Metro Manila Police Chief Guillermo Eleazar on Wednesday proposed implementing random bag and locker inspections in schools.
He made the statement even as the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency said it was closely monitoring the involvement of some media personalities in the illegal drug trade.
According to a report by GMA News’ Tina Panganiban Perez on Balitanghali, Eleazar made the proposal to nip the country’s drug problem in the bud.
He said the 44,000 drug suspects arrested and the 234,000 who surrendered to authorities in the past 23 months were proof of the large-scale drug problem in the Philippines.
Implementing the surprise inspections would help prevent the youth from getting mixed up with illegal drugs, Eleazar said, emphasizing that prevention was important.
But the ACT Teachers Party-list is against the proposal, saying its implementation might allow Oplan Tokhang to victimize students.
At an early-morning television interview on GMA 7, PDEA director general Aaron Aquino said the drug involvement of several media personalities had been double-checked in a series of surveillance operations.
“For the uniformed personnel, we have 800 plus. Included [in the narco-list] are media members, judges, government workers, elected government officials, all of them. That is why from 3,000 [in the past], the number has already doubled,” he told Unang Balita.
The new narco-list was an offshoot of a months-long effort of four government agencies to scrutinize and revalidate every name.
According to Aquino, they expect to finish the revalidation in two weeks.
Last April, PDEA, along with the Department of the Interior and Local Government, released the names of 207 barangay officials linked to the illegal drug trade as coddlers or protectors ahead of the May 14 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.
The narco-list, which was validated by four law enforcement intelligence agencies, included 117 barangay councilors and 90 barangay chairmen.
The updated narco-list included several members of the House of Representatives, mayors, vice mayors, uniformed personnel in the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police, elected officials and a few PDEA officials apart from the members of the media.
“The number in 2016 was more than 3,000. Now it has gone up to over 6,000,” Aquino said, referring to the list of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Aquino also raised alarm over a new modus operandi of drug syndicates using package counters inside malls for their illegal transactions.
“Distributors would pick up the gift-wrapped box left at the package counter [by the drug suppliers],” he said.
“Then the baggage number would be transferred to another person to get the items at the counter.”
In 2018 alone, Aquino said, 20 shipments of shabu and other “emerging drugs” were transported to the Philippines.
“[At least] 18 of these came from the United States, one from Congo and another one from the Netherlands. Some P500 million worth of drugs entered [our country],” Aquino said.
“We discovered the operandi when we conducted a controlled mode [of investigation]. Instead of directly giving the drugs to the distributors, the drugs are left at the malls’ package counters [as drop-off points]. Nobody would check the boxes since they were gift-wrapped.”