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DUMAGUETE City – The Diocese of Dumaguete will donate 14 hectares of land in Amlan, Negros Oriental, for a drug rehabilitation facility.
Bishop Julito Cortes and the Board of Consultors approved the donation “in principle,” said the diocesan clergy president, Father Ben Eric Lozada.
It is the Church’s “concrete response” to the government’s antidrug campaign, Lozada said.
The Church needs to “step in” and offer drug dependents another chance at life through recovery, he pointed out.
Many self-confessed drug users turned themselves in to the police but were not provided with options to get out of addiction.
Some of them were killed or warned about getting shot dead if they returnto their habits, the priest lamented.
“They don’t understand the way of a drug addict trying to be sober,”said Lozada, who experienced working with drug dependents while in the United States years ago.
A drug addict trying to recover goes through “difficult” withdrawal symptoms, and they need a place for that, Lozada explained.
Getting incarcerated in a detention facility is not what they need; they have to be somewhere they can be rehabilitated, he said.
The lot in Barangay Silab, Amlan town, is now available for use. The facility will be patterned after the Facenda de Esperanza Rehabilitation Center in Masbate, which caters to young drug and alcohol addicts,Lozada said.
Lozada and a few other priests from the Dumaguete diocese will visit Facenda de Esperanza and connect with priests running the facility.
He believes they can find plenty of partners who will support the drug rehabilitation project.
The center in Amlanwill cater to those who cannot afford expensive rehabilitation in private institutions, saidLozada.
A minimal fee will be charged to the clients, he said. (PNA)
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