P4M cocaine found in E. Samar shores

BORONGAN CITY, Philippines — At least P4 million worth of cocaine was recovered from a beach resort worker who claimed he found it on the shores of Barangay Sulangan in Guiuan town of Eastern Samar around at 11:30 p.m. Saturday, authorities said.

Guiuan Police Station acting chief, Senior Inspector Wilder Dadia, in his report revealed that a certain Jerome Balbuena, a 30-year-old caretaker of a resort in Sulangan, found floating on the waters the four bricks of cocaine, weighing a kilo each and wrapped with a brown packaging.

Balbuena immediately turned over the items to the Guiuan Police, which in turn handed it over to the PNP Crime Lab of the Police Regional Office-8 for examination.

Chief Inspector Viviene Mae Malibago, forensic chemist of the Crime Lab, declared that the found items were cocaine.

The police said this discovery may not be new however, recalling that sometime in January 2010, nearly 300 bricks of cocaine were also recovered in the waters of Eastern Samar.

Director General Aaron Aquino of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, during his recent visit to Leyte, however described the cocaine found in Eastern Visayas and other shores in Quezon and Sorsogon provinces were deemed of "low purity, and low grade."

Authorities now surmised that cocaine and other illegal drugs or contraband are now being dispatched via water transportation, prompting PDEA-8 Regional Director Edgar Jubay to create the Coastal Task Force — consisting of members of the Police, the Coast Guard, and the Philippine Navy — to secure all coastal areas from entry of illegal items.

Aquino is suspecting that there is a possibility that people behind these contrabands might have an underwater storage for cocaine and shabu.

"I suspect that itong mga na-recover na mga cocaine sa dagat, is one way of misleading the authorities. They might have an storage in the deep waters, so we need the PCG and the Navy to probe into this matter," Aquino added. (FREEMAN)