Pa meted 40 years
for raping daughter
BY CARLA GOMEZ

A Regional Trial Court judge yesterday sentenced a lumber yard worker to 40 years imprisonment without possibility of parole for raping his 7-year-old daughter, despite her pleas for him to stop, in their house located under a bridge in Bacolod City, in 2008.

RTC Branch 43 Judge Philadelfa Pagapong-Agraviador found the 40-year-old father, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of the victim, guilty beyond reasonable doubt of rape and sentenced him to suffer the penalty of reclusion perpetua.

He was also ordered to pay his daughter P50,000 as civil indemnity and P50,000 as moral damages.

Twenty-one of 32 towns and cities in Negros Occidental belong to the 609 poorest population in the country and are qualified for the Empowerment of the Poor Program, that is a flagship program of the Aquino administration, Maritona Victa-Labajo, National Anti-Poor Commission Undersecretary, said yesterday.

Bacolod City is not included in the 21, although Negros ranked 11th among the areas with the poorest towns and cities in the Philippines, based on a survey conducted by the National Statistical Coordinating Board in 2010, she said.

Labajo said the 609 is about 42 percent of the 1,634 towns and cities in the country.

About P100,000 worth of suspected shabu, marijuana bricks, leaves and fruiting tops were recovered by Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency operatives in an anti-illegal drugs operation in Hinigaran town, Negros Occidental, at about 7 a.m. yesterday.

The PDEA members apprehended Roland Tison of Brgy. 4, Hinigaran, after a buy-bust operation conducted, based on information that he is engaged in the illegal drugs trade, PDEA Region 6 Director Yogi Ruiz said.

Tison was apprehended after he handed a small sachet of suspected shabu to a poseur buyer in exchange for P500, Ruiz said.