Hundreds of persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) at the Negros Occidental District Jail (NODJ) in Bago City called on the seven Negrense lawmakers at the House of Representatives to help increase their food and medical budget starting January next year.
In a petition letter addressed to Representatives Gerardo Valmayor, Alfredo Marañon III, Stephen Joseph Paduano, Emilio Bernardino Yulo and Greg Gasataya, as well as Representatives Juliet Marie Ferrer and Mercedes Alvarez, the PDLs called for a daily P100 food allowance, from P70/PDL/day, and daily P30 medicine budget, from P14/PDL/day.
Around 700 PDLs at the NODJ-Male Dorm and 50 detainees at the NODJ-Female Dorm signed the petition this September. They are among the more than 4,000 inmates in the province, and the nearly 180,000 PDLs being supervised by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) nationwide.
Congress is presently deliberating next year’s national budget for the Marcos government’s various agencies as it enacts the General Appropriations Act of 2025.
In the said petition letter, the PDLs said that their current P70/PDL daily subsistence allowance “has now been rendered inadequate due to the sharp rise in the cost of basic food items and utilities in the country.”
They also said that high inflation “meant that our daily food ration has been affected in terms of quantity and quality, and has forced many of our families – our very dependents before our incarceration – to send us financial and material aid, thereby worsening the already precarious economic situation of our spouses and children.”
“Your wholehearted support would help in no small measure the BJMP’s safekeeping and development objectives consistent with society’s rehabilitative and humane-oriented goals for the almost 250,000 PDLs and other prisoners all over the country,” the PDLs stated.
*Copy of the petition letter is attached.
