New Davao City Mega jail can accommodate 5,000 inmates

- accommodate 5,000 persons deprived of liberty (PDL). city jail facility lies within an eight-hectare property in Barangay Wangan in Calinan district. The current Davao City Jail in Maa is already congested. Designed to accommodate 700 people it now houses 3,000 PDLs.

According to Jail Senior Inspector Ellen Rose Saragena, chief Community Relations Section of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology they will soon be transferring the PDLs of the male dormitory of the city jail in Maa to the mega facility.

“For now, we have 3,100 PDLs in the male dormitory it’s very congested because the facility is good for 700 people. We are just waiting for the construction to be finished,” Saragena said.

They are still waiting for water and power connections in the new jail facility. Saragena said the challenge in connecting these utilities is that the jail is far and the nearest community to the

The Court of Appeals (CA) has issued a ruling that dealt a blow to the campaign against open-pit mining in South Cotabato, but activists remained unperturbed and vowed to sustain their opposition to the destructive mining method.

In a decision dated August 22, 2022 but circulated in the province only this week, the CA declared that the open-pit ban in South Cotabato is valid, but its application is limited to small-scale mining operations.

“Further, it is clarified that the ban on open-pit mining does not apply to large scale mining operations of the said province, particularly the Tampakan Project,” the ruling by the CA’s 23rd Division based in Cagayan de Oro stated.

The controversial Tampakan Project, touted as the largest untapped copper and gold minefield in Southeast Asia, is being developed by Sagittarius Mines Inc., which revealed that the most viable method to extract the shallow minerals is through open-pit mining. The CA 23rd Division issued the ruling following the petition filed by B’laan Indigenous Cultural Communities consisting of the indigenous peoples of the (sic) Bongmal, etc, et. al. against the Provincial Government of South Cotabato.

The petitioners questioned the decision of Regional Trial Court Branch 24 Judge Vicente Peña rendered in October 2020, which favored the prohibition on open-pit mining contained in the province’s environment code.

“Section 22 (b), which bans open-pit mining in the province of South Cotabato is not invalid, but rather legal and consistent with DAO (Department Administrative Order) 2017-10 (issued by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources), the Local Government Code (of the Philippines) and above all the Constitution,” the judge had ruled.

Diocese of Marbel Bishop Cerilo Casicas blew the whistle on the CA decision, urging South Cotabato Governor Reynaldo Tamayo, Jr. to hold a public dialogue over the ruling, which neither he nor the provincial government did not announce to the constituents.

“Notwithstanding the pronouncement of the Court of Appeals, we remain firm with our