COTABATO CITY – Four of the 36 municipalities in Maguindanao are now “drug-free”, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (PDEA-ARMM) said on Tuesday.
Juvenal Azurin, PDEA-ARMM director, told officials of the Maguindanao Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) during a meeting on Tuesday that the towns of Pandag, Shariff Aguak, Paglat, and Kabuntalan have been cleared of illegal drug traffickers, peddlers, and users.
The PDEA-ARMM also noted that the village of Kabuling in Pandag town was first to be cleared of illegal drugs. The village was once known to be a major transshipment point for “shabu” (methamphetamine hydrochloride) in Maguindanao.
Azurin said drug trafficking In the province is a “joint business venture” of big-time drug syndicates and the Islamic State-linked Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) operating in the area. He said that joint police and military operations, in coordination with PDEA-ARMM, will continue to dismantle drug syndicates in Maguindanao.
Both Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu, PPOC chair, and Brigadier Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, Army’s 6th Infantry Division commander, lauded the town executives of the four towns for their anti-drug programs that helped clear their communities of “undesirables.”
“The effort also saved the future of young Moro children from the evils of illegal drugs,” Mangudadatu told reporters during an interview.
Sobejana expressed readiness to assist the PDEA and the police in neutralizing other armed groups linked to illegal drugs in Maguindanao. He said the military can provide artillery and armor support to PDEA agents and local policemen when the situation calls for it, even as he cited the joint efforts of government law enforcement agencies that led to the destruction of a BIFF illegal drug laboratory and bomb-making factory in Liguasan Marsh of Maguindanao in May.
Mangudadatu has challenged all the 32 town mayors of Maguindanao to emulate the feat of the four drug-free municipalities by focusing on anti-drug programs in support of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war against the drug menace. (Edwin Fernandez/PNA)
