Aaron Aquino, director general of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), on Friday (July 5) said the PDEA was suffering from lack of manpower as it takes the lead in President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. “As much as we would like to recruit more PDEA agents, we are just being provided a very measly 186 agents for 2019. There are only a total of 1,810 PDEA agents as of July 2019, according to the agency’s spokesperson, Derrick Carreon. It doubled the basic pay of uniformed personnel in 2017 amounting to P14,834. Despite the manpower shortage, Aquino said he remained confident that the number of villages still considered to be drug infested will be drug-free by the end of Duterte’s term in 2022.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer July 05, 2019 11:26 UTC