Partnership for drug recovery
C“ ommitment is needed to attend rehab.”
The statement made by Subangdaku Barangay Captain Ernie Manatad to SunStar Cebu’s Cherry Ann T. Lim can very well stand for what’s equally glaring in ongoing efforts to address the human and social costs of drug addiction: the shared stake in the community to rescue those who surrendered to Project Tokhang.
Last March 3- 6, SunStar Cebu ran Lim’s fourpart special report. The “After the Tokhang” series explained the challenges confronting citizens, communities, the government, and civil society in assisting about 67,829 drug users and pushers who surrendered in Cebu from July 1, 2016 to Feb. 2, 2017.
Under the guidelines of the Philippine National Police, surrenderers not diagnosed as severely addicted are referred to the local government units for outpatient rehabilitation. However, considerable constraints obstruct the paths of former drug dependents desiring to clean up their acts and move on.
Last Mar. 3, the first part of the series focused on the shortage and high costs of rehabilitation centers to serve the severely addicted in Cebu Province.
In the second part, “Local government on the front lines,” published on Mar. 4, Lim quoted Manatad, whose sentiment sums up the essential prerequisite for frontline local government units (LGUs) reaching out to drug surrenderers.
The LGU system is riddled with gaps, from inadequate preparations of the Barangay Anti-Drug Abuse Councils (Badacs) to lack of barangay social workers and shortage of funds to implement and sustain community-based outpatient treatment programs.
Yet, as the Mar. 4 sidebar “Barangay, church help surrenderers” revealed, a leap of faith is taken by those who initiate the process of drug rehab, whether this be a person, a family, or an LGU.
The “Labang (Lahat Bangon or Everyone Rise” barangay-based program is piloted in Subangdaku because its officials were the ones who turned up in a meeting launching the program.
The Labang program taps into the Ugnayan ng Barangay at Simbahan (Ubas), a network of barangay, police, church, and civil society groups. Conceptualized by the late Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo, Ubas will also be involved in the Cebu Archdiocesan Program for Drug Dependents (CAPDD), launched last Feb. 21.
Other Cebu parishes and religious orders are initiating programs or using their resources and networks to offer outpatient recovery and rehabilitation services to drug surrenderers.
In the Lubas and other programs involving the Church, spiritual formation is perceived as key to fortify a person’s commitment to go through the process and fight relapsing back to addiction.
Interventions for recovery and rehabilitation include the co-dependents since dysfunctional families consistently showed up in the back stories of drug surrenderers. Aside from entailing fewer expenses, barangay-based rehabilitation strengthens families to provide the support needed for drug dependents’ lifelong recovery.
The rising death toll in the government’s anti-drug war has pitted the present administration against the leaders of the Catholic Church. While President Rodrigo Duterte has denied that the state sanctions extrajudicial killings (EJKs), the deaths resulting from police operations and EJKs have been denounced for violating the rule of law.
The Church has also criticized President Duterte for his plan to reimpose the death penalty for heinous crimes, including drug-related offenses.
Yet, Labang, Ubas, CAPDD, and other initiatives sustain the late DILG secretary Robredo’s belief in grassroots governance. Church leaders, faith-based groups, and citizen volunteers have demonstrated that it is not a contradiction but a complement to their principled dissent to the death toll in the War on Drugs and pro-human rights advocacy.
To give surrenderers a chance to recover and live free from drugs, the government and other stakeholders must collaborate to ensure life continues beyond Tokhang.