At the News@Hues forum of the Pampanga Press Club held at Park Inn by Radisson Clark, Catacutan said the Department of Social Welfare and Development would construct the center on a six-hectare area donated by the local government at the O’Donnel resettlement in Capas.
He said the proposed rehabilitation center was approved by the Department of Interior and Local Government. It would be the second major rehabilitation center to be constructed in the country, next to the one built at Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija.
Catacutan noted that Nueva Ecija had also offered to host the P1 billion rehabilitation center, but could offer only 3,000 square meters of area.
“We are donating six hectares of the 7.5 hectares of local government land in O’Donnel. I have offered the remaining 1.5 hectares for the construction of a permanent evacuation center for folk being temporarily displaced by floods and other natural disasters,” he added.
Catacutan said Capas was chosen as site for the new rehabilitation center because it is the only town in the country which has its own rehabilitation center for local drug dependents. “We established it in October last year and it has treated more than 200 drug dependents already,” he noted.
