FOR CITY AND INMATES’ WELFARE

THE DAGUPAN City Council is set to study plans to relocate the overcrowded Dagupan City District Jail, which currently stands at the Dagupan beach area, after it has determined that it has been regular source of pollution of the Lingayen Gulf with its daily waste water discharge.

Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, who presides the council, said the request of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology for the construction of an extension of the Dagupan District Jail must be studied thoroughly as it may no longer be feasible to construct additional facility in the area.

While she clarified that the city council is not against the proposed expansion of the district jail, she said the better long-term solution is transferring the facility somewhere else.

“We must adopt a plan on the long term to protect the inmates, the city jail, tourism and health of our people,” Fernandez said.

In a talk before the city council on Monday, Superintendent Edgar Bolcio, jail warden, asked the city government to help in the construction of an extension of the district jail, costing P5.5 million in order to accommodate more inmates.

The Dagupan District Jail, which is built for a prisoner population of 100, currently keeps 382 inmates from Dagupan and five other towns in Pangasinan.

Built in 1999 near the Tondaligan Beach, a tourist destination, the district jail has a floor area of 367.25 square meters within a 3,000 square meter compound.

Fernandez said that aside from the fact that the city jail is being denounced for polluting the Lingayen Gulf, there is also a growing concern about the effect of the sea water getting nearer and nearer to the shore due to the impact of climate change.

The Area Vocational Rehabilitation Center (AVRC) in front of the district jail is now in danger of collapsing owing to serious erosion.

Fernandez said the city engineering office must study the foundation of the city jail to determine if it can hold the proposed extension.

“In this case, we must have to ensure the safety of the inmates as well as the district jail itself,” said Fernandez in an interview.

Councilors Jesus Canto and Jose Netu Tamayo, chairmen on the committees on health and on tourism, respectively, agreed on the need for the relocation of the city jail to improve the city’s health and sanitation as well as increase the flow of tourists to the city.

The vice mayor said she will ask Councilor Alfie Fernandez, chairman on the committee on land use, to consider undertaking a study on possible relocation sites for the city jail.

At the same time, Fernandez said the council will push for the creation of a competent Tondaligan Park management team that will oversee the day- to-day activities in the area to boost tourism.—LM

Tourism officer
says waste water
from jail is OK

WHILE the city council has expressed alarm over the pollution caused by the Dagupan District Jail, the city’s tourism officer believes the wastes being discharged by the district jail into the beach does not pose any problem to the city’s beach tourist destination.

Michelle Lioanag, tourism officer, said based on her ocular inspection of the jail with an Interior and Local Government officer, the facility is discharging waste water, not solid waste, to the Lingayen Gulf.

“The water that comes out and goes directly to the sea is water used by the inmates for bathing,” she said as she declared that the water being released by the jail is “okay and acceptable”.

“As big as my nose is, I did not smell any foul odor or whatever. It was so sad that the BJMP (Bureau of Jail Management and Penology) is being blamed (for the pollution of the Lingayen Gulf),” said Lioanag.

Residents in the area complained of stench and malodor emanating from the jail compound at night.

But she admitted before the city council on Monday that the water comes out from the septic tank of the facility is filtered first in its chamber before it passes through two other chambers.

BJMP Supt. Edgar Bolcio, the jail warden, earlier denied that the facility is polluting the Lingayen Gulf but admitted that the jail is discharging water to the beach.

Bolcio also bewailed reports singling out the district jail as the only polluter of the Lingayen Gulf when in fact there are many residential houses and establishments also letting their waste water flow towards the sea.

Both Bolcio and Lioanag tagged prawn hatcheries as the bigger polluters as they used to unload used water to the sea mixed with fish feeds which is even more toxic and could result in fishkill.

Councilor Jesus Canto, chairman on health of the city council, immediately rebuffed Lioanag saying the water that comes out from a septic tank is unsanitary and needs to be treated before disposal.

Canto, a doctor, said the water from a septic tank contains ecoli bacteria which cause acute gastro enteritis, a disease found prevalent along the coastal area of Dagupan.

Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez agreed with Canto that waste water from the septic tank poses dangers to people swimming at the Tondaligan beach and the city’s thriving aqua-culture industry that produces the city’s famous bangus.

Canto said he will urge Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. and Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez to source a financial grant from Japan for the construction of a water treatment plant in the area, which needs at least a two-hectare land as a waste storage area.

Meanwhile, he warned residents as well of the provisions in the newly passed sanitation code requiring them to provide septic tanks in their homes. – LM

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