30 private firms team up with DILG’s BIDA anti-drug campaign

By Joel E. Zurbano

THIRTY private companies have joined forces with the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) in the anti-drugs war in the country.

The partnership was announced during the launch of the “BIDA (Buhay Ingatan, Droga’y Ayawan) Workplace” at

Eastwood Richmonde Hotel in Quezon City on Thursday.

DILG Secretary Benjamin Abalos, Jr. enjoined private companies to have their own anti- drug policy and conduct random drug testing of their employees to reduce the use of illegal drugs.

“BIDA Program is all about shared responsibility in countering illegal drugs, and BIDA Workplace is our bid to forge dependable partnerships with the private sector. You will take care of your own internal mechanism but what is important is that every company would have a drug policy because they will be afraid to use it,” Abalos said.

According to the Secretary, the BIDA Workplace was part of the government’s whole-of-nation approach to fight and eradicate illegal drugs throughout the country. Through this, he said, other aspects of the BIDA program will gradually achieve the drug-free status of the Philippines. He said he was happy with the solidarity of private companies that joined the program, and their desire to heed the DILG in subjecting their employees to drug tests. percent declared they “don’t know.

The SWS survey was held March 2629 this year, using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults aged 18 and above nationwide. It had a margin of error of +/-2.8 percent.

Earlier, the SWS said unemployment among adult Filipinos decreased from 9.6 million in December 2022 to 8.7 million in March 2023.

But the SWS said this was still a far cry from the 7.9 million unemployed Filipinos in December 2019.

NEARLY eight out of 1,000 Filipinos are classified as “modern slaves,” according to an international human rights group.

The Walk Free Foundation’s 2023 Global Slavery Index which measures the extent of modern slavery in 160 countries, reported that almost eight or 7.8 per 1,000 Filipinos live in modern slavery. This translates to 859,000 people.

The index indicated that modern day slavery refers to situations of “exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, or deception.”

Modern slavery also includes “forced labor, forced or servile marriage, debt bondage, forced commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, slavery-like practices, and the sale and exploitation of children,” it added.

The index also reported that the Philippines rated 66 out of 100 in vulnerability to modern slavery, and 59 percent in government response to modern slavery.

Philippine laws criminalized forced labor, along with the commercial sexual exploitation of children in keeping with international conventions.

The index suggested that the Philippines should enact laws or policies that require private recruitment fees be exacted on employers.