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POLICE personnel that were assigned with the
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) would be recalled early
next month, the Philippine National Police (PNP) chief said on
Tuesday.
PNP chief Director General Oscar
Calderon said the recall of PNP personnel from PDEA is part of the
provisions of Republic Act (RA) 9165, or the Comprehensive Dangerous
Drug Act of 2002, which created the PDEA.
“We will put in effect the
provisions of the law that says all our augmentations at the PDEA
will be recalled,” Calderon said during the Tuesday forum in Camp
Crame.
He said they have about 500
policemen assigned with the PDEA since it became operational in July
2002, a month after R.A. 9165 was signed into law.
R.A. 9165 mandates the PDEA to
have its own organic personnel within five years after the law took
effect.
“We want to have one drug
enforcement agency. Other countries have their own DEU. We want the
PDEA to be supported by the government and to recruit on [its] own
and operate on [its] own,” Calderon said.
He said the 500 policemen that
would be pulled out from the PDEA would be reassigned to their
mother unit or at the PNP’s Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations
Task Force (AID-SOTF).
In the Cordillera region, a
long-time intelligence officer at the PDEA-CAR is weighing things if
he would stay or go back to the PNP. He said drug syndicates would
have a heyday since nobody would go after them.
Cordillera is the biggest
producer of marijuana in the country. 
--Anthony Vargas and Thomas Picaña
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