CITY OF MALOLOS, Bulacan – Governor Wilhelmino M. Sy-Alvarado has ordered the Provincial Jail Warden to strictly implement strong measures to ensure that no illegal activities can emanate from the now overcrowded provincial penitentiary.
At the same time, the governor also instructed Bulacan Police acting provincial director Senior Supt. Romeo Caramat Jr., to help Bulacan Provincial Jail Warden Fernando Villanueva in the regular inspection of the inmates’ prison cells and make sure that no contrabands, deadly weapons or prohibited drugs can be smuggled inside the provincial jail.
“The police have been successful in neutralizing drug dealers in the province and most of those being arrested are getting incarcerated at our provincial jail and they are already bursting to the seams. We want to make sure that they can no longer do their illicit business inside the provincial jail,” Alvarado said.
Alvarado said Villanueva has already banned mobile phones inside the premises of the jail.
Rigid inspection of visitors are now also being enforced before they can get inside the jail.
He also said that Villanueva has secluded high profile inmates from regular ones to make sure that they can no longer make contacts with their drug sources outside the jail.
He said that regular inspection of jails and ensuring that high profile inmates can no longer made transaction outside is part of the provincial government’s offensivein support of President Rodrigo Duterte’s ardent intention in ridding the country of the dope menace.
At the same time, Alvarado also announced that he has already asked Vice Gov. Daniel Fernando and the Sanguniang Panglalawigan to pass a resolution transferring the BPJ to a more spacious area in the mountain town of Dona Remedios Trinidad.
Tthe present provincial jail was designed to hold some 700 inmates but it has now ballooned to more than 3,000 and counting due to the unrelenting war being waged against drug dealers and dopesters in the province, so it is prudent that the provincial penitentiary be transferred ” Alvarado said.
He said that the town of DRT is an ideal site because4 if a new facility will be built there, the inmates can do farming and will have more breathing space unlike the present condition at the BPJ where the inmates are now jampacked like sardines in a can. — Emil G. Gamos