By Gideon Belen
LUCBAN, Quezon Aug. 14 – Around 44 drug surrenderers are this year’s first batch of “graduates” who completed their skills training and disaster preparedness capacity building sessions during the first month of their six-month “campers” rehab sessions.
In an interview with PNA here on Monday, Police Chief Inspector Alejandro D. Onquit, Lucban chief of police, said the graduates completed their skills training and disaster preparedness sessions at the “Pagbabago at Pagasa Reflection Camp” (PPRC) under the auspices of the Yakap Bayan Program in Barangay Palola here.
Onquit said the graduation ceremony is only the first part of training for the PPRC campers under the rehabilitation program which began July 10 this year.
He said their next training and hands-on exposure is when they go back to their respective communities for the barangay immersion for their re-orientation and eventual return to society as renewed persons.
The camp will now usher in the second batch of surrenderers for the similar skills training and capacity building seminar in Lucban’s unique “campsite.”
This town’s drug rehabilitation camp in Palola Village opened last July and accepting drug surrenderers by batches who will have to undergo the six-month rehabilitation program.
Preparatory and orientation sessions, skills training and seminars are featured during a month’s duration for the surrenderers-campers in the one-hectare lot with refurbished building turned into a campsite.
Lucban Mayor Celso Olivier Dator initiated project in cooperation with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Yakap Bayan program to cater to some 543 drug surrenderers in this town.
Dator said the camp volunteers and PPRC officers help the surrenderers shed off their old image as “cancer of the society” and mold them into productive citizens.
He said the local government finance the rehabilitation cost with the assistance of the Department of Health (DoH) and the Bureau of Parole and Probation based in Quezon province.
The six-month rehabilitation program includes physical conditioning, training on fire fighting and rescue, spiritual enlightenment seminar and community immersion. (Gideon Belen/PNA)
