THE Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) is eyeing an increase in the daily food subsistence allowance and medicine expenses for the more than 50,000 persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) under its care.
BuCor officer-in-charge Gregorio Catapang Jr. said the agency wants to increase the P70 per day food allowance for PDLs to P100.
Data showed the BuCor has a budget of about P1.2 billion under the 2023 General Appropriations Act for the food of 50,126 PDLs under its care.
This, according to Catapang, would increase to P1.9 billion in 2024 if their proposed P100-a-day food allowance is granted.
Taking into account an annual 5 percent inflation rate and the same for the number of PDLs, Catapang said, BuCor’s annual budget for food allowance would increase to P2.2 billion in 2028.
Republic Act 10575 or the BuCor Modernization Act of 2013 mandates that the safekeeping of inmates includes provision of decent quarters, food, water and clothing in compliance with established United Nations standard.
In 2019, the Commission on Audit flagged various violations committed by caterers engaged by BuCor to supply the food for PDLs, such as feeding pork to Muslims.
Catapang said that when he assumed the top BuCor post in October 2022, he directed the supplier to deliver only white rice after he found out that PDLs were being fed “rejected NFA rice” that “pigs would not even eat.”
He said he has also ordered a renovation of the decrepit NBP kitchen to ensure meals are clean.
Meanwhile, from the P15 medicine expenses per PDL per day, Catapang said they wanted to hike the amount to P30 in 2024. This would see BuCor’s funding for medicine expenses increase to P576.3 million in 2024 to P666.1 by 2028.
Of the PDLs under its care, 29,530 are detained at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City, 3,297 at the Correctional Institute for Women (CIW) in Mandaluyong City, 2,555 in the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in Palawan, 6,686 in Davao Prison and Penal Farm in Davao del Norte, 544 in CIW-Mindanao, 2,625 in San Ramon Prison and Penal Farm in Zamboanga City, 2,517 in Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro, and 2,375 in the Leyte Regional Prison in Abuyog, Southern Leyte.
All of BuCor’s prison facilities are experiencing high congestion rates, with the national penitentiary having 356 percent as it was meant to house only 6,435 PDLs when it was built.
