The head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Region 6 yesterday said that they will be communicating with different local government units in Western Visayas to urge private entities to regularly conduct random drug tests for their employees.

Ronnie Delicana, who was in Bacolod City for a courtesy call on local officials, said the LGUs can add the employees’ manual where there are provisions for the regular conduct of drug tests as a requirement in applying for business permits.

He said he has observed that most business entities only require drug testing during application and once an applicant is already hired no more drug tests are conducted.

Delicana stressed that it is important that business owners conduct random drug tests on their employees as those who were illegal drug cannot perform well.

Meanwhile, he said that 62, out of 4,050 barangays in the Western Visayas are seriously affected by dangerous drugs and three of them are in Bacolod City.

Delicana said the barangays in Bacolod that remained seriously affected by dangerous drugs are Barangays 2, 22 and Banago.

However, PDEA will review the list of barangays seriously affected by dangerous drugs, it was made about five years ago and some are data are no longer accurate.

Delicana said he hopes they will be able to reduce it in eight months by convincing local government units and barangay officials to submit data on illegal drugs

Delicana added that barangays are considered seriously affected by illegal drugs if there is a shabu laboratory, marijuana plantation, drug den, and three drug pushers in them.

He said a series of barangay clearing operations on these barangays will be conducted so they can be excluded them from the list of illegal drug affected areas in the Western Visayas.*APN

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