Garin calls for another round of IRC probe
Unresolved issues on the management, operations and system inside the Iloilo Rehabilitation Center (IRC) have now triggered yet another round of legislative action in the Capitol.
Pushed by First District Board Member Richard Garin, a call for investigation in aid of legislation was made in yesterday’s regular session.
Garin in a privilege speech raised hanging questions on the fate of IRC detainees who have either fallen ill or diagnosed to be suffering mentally.
“I would like to look into the implementation of policies related to the inmates’ confinement and rehabilitation expected of us being public servants. Good food alone is not enough to ease one’s troubled mind inside the IRC,” Garin said. He then went on to cite what termed were “needed” here yet seemingly wanting.
“The Iloilo Rehabilitation Center, to my understanding, is a temporary holding center for persons with pending cases, which in essence, are those people whose guilt were not yet proven beyond reasonable doubt and are, therefore, still to be considered innocent under our laws. It therefore challenges one’s sensitivity to see the inmates of this province being already punished, quite so literally, by the sub-human conditions attaining at the IRC,” he continued. “This truth becomes more inconvenient in view of the constitutional mandate that “The employment of physical, psychological, or degrading punishment against any prisoner or detainee or the use of substandard or inadequate penal facilities under subhuman conditions shall be dealt with by law.”
Board Member Garin then rallied for support “to move that this August Body adopt a resolution calling for an investigation in order to ferret out the truth surrounding this problem. It is my great hope that we could find the truth, and from that point we could proceed to enact legislation that shall redound to our less fortunate brothers.”
“We do not do this just because we are public officials and the task is expected of us. We do this in the greater act of humanity, believing that we are all children of the Mighty God,” Garin ended.