malaysiangBAGUIO: A whole-of-government approach in partnership with the private sector to provide livelihood assistance and intervention will help curb marijuana cultivation in the provinces of Benguet and Kalinga, a Cordillera police official said Tuesday.
‘The problem is poverty. People plant (marijuana) because they need to live, they want to have money for their basic needs, and planting vegetables will be difficult considering the absence of roads,’ Brig. Gen. David Peredo, Police Regional Office-Cordillera (PRO-Cor) Director, said during the Kapihan sa Bagong Pilipinas press briefing here on Tuesday.
‘We need all the government agencies collaborating to help the people in the community make a decent living so that they will stop planting,’ he said.
A consolidated report of the PRO-Cor Public Information Office from July 22 to 28, 2024 showed that PHP16.41 million worth of marijuana plants in Kalinga and Benguet were destroyed by government anti-illegal drugs operatives.
Peredo said they can also look into th
e utilization of the funds supposedly for eradication operations to help the people through trainings, capacity building and market linkages.
He cited the skills training being provided by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority; capacity building trainings of the Department of Trade and Industry and Department of Science and Technology (DOST); capital and machinery assistance from the Department of Trade and Industry, DOST and Department of Labor and Employment; and road projects of the Department of Tourism (DOT) and the Department of Public Works and Highways.
He said that with assistance put together, cultivating marijuana will be a thing of the past.
Authorities also found that most of the marijuana cultivation sites are covered by the difficult terrain of Mt. Chumanchill, a reason why no cultivator has been arrested in plantation areas.
During the same briefing, Department of the Interior and Local Government-Cordillera Director Araceli San Jose noted that in 2020, leaders of the re
gional line and law enforcement agencies and the local government units formed the Mt. Chumanchill Task Force to curb marijuana cultivation in the area, which is bounded by different municipalities of Kalinga, most of which are in Tinglayan.
She said they are updating the task force’s comprehensive development plan and hopes to implement more programs with the help of the national government.
‘The proposals have been submitted to the Dangerous Drugs Board for funding, initially with the DOT proposal for the construction of a road. The implementation of the enhanced action plan will be integrated with the other plans for a holistic approach,’ she said.
Former Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Cordillera director Gil Castro earlier said that among the possible livelihood seen to help people stop planting and cultivating marijuana are animal raising, fish production and processing, and orchid growing.
Source: Philippines News Agency
