SAN Juan City Vice Mayor Janella Estrada has shifted to higher gear her Jobs. Education. Livelihood and Sports (Jels) advocacy with her own money while focusing on the anti-drug campaign in line with the national administration’s unrelenting drive since the first week of July.
Estrada, who chairs the city’s anti-drugs abuse council, earlier warned drug users who surrendered to police authorities they would be arrested, shamed in public and booted out of the city if they continued their illicit activities.
According to Estrada, 62 of 69 surrenderers had tested positive for illegal drug use in a lightning drug test last month.
The vice mayor, who presides over sessions of the City Council, told surrenderers to “stop taking illegal drugs lest I ask the police to arrest you.”
She told the Manila Standard her Jels advocacy, begun when she was still a member of the City Council, would be continued regularly now.
She said she would be spending her own money on this program since the official budget is limited.
As a councilor, Estrada, daughter of Senator Jinggoy Estrada, launched livelihood projects and distributed food carts to the poor in the 21 barangays of the city, known as the site of the first battle of the Katipunan in the latter part of the 20th century.
She reiterated her determination to remove all addicts and drug addiction in what has since become a highly urbanized city, which line she kept repeating with stiff upper-lip during the campaign for the May 9 elections.
Estrada said she has pushed for alternative ways to help rehabilitate surrenderers in the barangays with different clusters for trainings and seminars.
According to her, the surrenderers do zumba—in previously designated areas, with police security nearby—an aerobic fitness program featuring movements inspired by various styles of Latin American dance and performed primarily to Latin American dance music but has made inroads in the Philippines.
Surrenderers who failed to finish their elementary and high school education in the lower rungs are given a chance to study, using the alternative learning system offered by the Department of Education while those who did not finish higher education are given livelihood trainings.
Every weekend, Estrada said surrenderers are given drug counselling and pieces of spiritual advice, hoping the menace of drug addiction will be eradicated as soon as possible in the smallest city- in the metropolis which has been described as a “Rising City of Excellence.”
On the main, Estrada pointed to poverty as the main problem in San Juan, stressing the highest concern of the local government, led by Mayor Guia G. Gomez, is to battle head-on this problem.