CABANATUAN CITY – After officials in Tanay, Rizal rejected it in 2006, the National Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City will find home in an army camp in Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija.
This certainty came to light as Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director Jesus Bucayo announced that the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) has already approved the transfer of the national penitentiary to the province.
“The P50.18-billion project was already green-lighted by the NEDA board,” Bucayo said during the inspection by members of the House Justice Committee of the Bilibid recently. He said the construction of the new correctional facility in Nueva Ecija will be undertaken through public-private partnership scheme.
The project will be a joint undertaking of the Department of Justice and the Bu- Cor. Local officials in Nueva Ecija are “welcoming” it. Gen. Tinio town is one of the areas covered by the 45,000 hectare army camp reservation in the province, the others extending to Palayan City, Laur, and Sta. Rosa in Nueva Ecija and Dingalan in Aurora.
It can be reached through Gapan City passing San Leonardo and Peñaranda towns in the south and in central and northern Nueva Ecija via Sta. Rosa, Cabanatuan City and Laur via Fort Magsaysay and Dingalan in the east.
According to the Public- Private Partnership Center, the planned Nueva Ecija penitentiary can accommodate 26,880 inmates from NBP and the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW).
In a project presentation during a public hearing in Palayan City for the proposed transfer of the NBP in Nueva Ecija last July 23, architect Armando Alli, adviser of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Center, said the two-storey new facility will be in a 500-hectare area in Barangay Nazareth in Gen. Tinio town inside the Fort Magsaysay Military Reservation.
The public hearing was called by Gov. Aurelio Umali amid concerns over the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the project in the province. DOJ Undersecretary Francisco Baraan, the department’s supervising official of the BuCor and the NBP, said the new facility will follow international standards.
He said that at present, prison conditions in the various penal facilities in the country leave much to be desired, citing those in Muntinlupa, Palawan and Davao. “I saw correctional facilities in Japan, Canada and Australia and our facilities pale in comparison,” he said.
He added that Muntinlupa, for one, does not look like a prison facility at all and constitutes cruel and degrading punishment to the prisoners. He said the 551-hectare NBP in Muntinlupa, which opened in 1940, is now heavily congested as it houses 14,500 prisoners in its maximum security detention area alone although it was programmed to accommodate only 8,400 inmates.
All in all, the NBP houses around 20,000 inmates. The government plans to convert the Muntinlupa penitentiary, valued at around P42 billion, into a mixed-use commercial area. Also during the public hearing, it was pointed out that in the construction of the prison facilities, about 40, 000 workers will be hired, majority of whom will be Novo Ecijanos.
In addition, the facilities will need some 4,800 custodial and rehabilitation officers and 9,000 people for prison maintenance. Based on the timetable presented, the bidding for the project has been set in February 2015, contract-signing in April 2015 and actual construction will start in October 2015. It will take three years to complete the construction of the facilities.
To be transferred are 20,000 inmates from the NBP and 2,000 from the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong City. In 2006, then-president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Executive Order 568 authorizing the transfer of the NBP to a 272-hectare reservation in Barangay Cuyambay in Tanay but local officials in Tanay rejected it.
According to Gen. Tinio Mayor Virgilio Bote, his town is opening its doors wide to the transfer of the NBP. He said the imminent transfer of the prisoners in his area has not created a fear factor in the town. He said the prison facility project is a very rare opportunity to pass up for the town.
“Out of 1,500 towns, we were chosen to be the site of the NBP, so why not?” Bote told newsmen. “Sa dami ba naman ng bayan, ikaw ang pinili tapos kokontrahin mo? (Of so many towns you were chosen and yet you would oppose it?),” he said.
The National Bilibid Prison is not just a jailhouse but a tourist spot, according to Baraan. “It will turn the province of Nueva Ecija a sleeping tourism giant into a tourist mecca once the penitentiary is completed.” Baraan cited the NBP’s tourism potentials after some of those who attended the public hearing expressed fears the project might put Nueva Ecija in a bad light because of the supposed social stigma attached to prison houses.
He said such fears and misconceptions are unfounded, saying that the proposed state-of-the-art facility, which will be similar to a prison house in Japan and the first of its kind in the country, would in fact enhance Nueva Ecija’s potentials for tourism.
“I can assure you that this prison facility will have the 4Ms with it: maganda, malinis, maayos, maaliwalas (elegant, clean, orderly and with a cozy ambience),” he said. Baraan said the so-called social stigma associated with prison houses is just a myth, citing the NBP in Muntinlupa is now surrounded by many plush subdivisions.
Gov. Umali welcomed the project, saying it’s about time the national government addresses squarely the problem of facilities in the various prison houses in the country.
