Execs eye higher walls for NBP

MANILA, Philippines – New Bilibid Prison officials are planning to raise the state penitentiary’s walls to thwart the entry of contraband, NBP spokesman Msgr. Roberto Olaguer said yesterday.

“(The walls) should be high enough to prevent escape and prevent contraband from being thrown over the fence,” he said, but added that the project depends on the “available budget.”

In a series of raids on prison dormitories under “Oplan Galugad,” prison authorities confiscated guns, bladed weapons, explosives, gallons of liquor, a radio-controlled toy helicopter, sex toys, television sets, refrigerators and wi-fi routers.

Olaguer said the raids are regularly done by the Bureau of Corrections to complement the random frisking of inmates.

A raid earlier this month on the dormitory building assigned to members of the Commando and Sigue-Sigue Sputnik gangs led to the seizure of a large cache of firearms buried in one of the detention cells. 

More than 50 high-risk inmates, including convicted drug lords and murderers, are serving time in the NBP, which houses at least 14,000 convicts in its nine-hectare compound.

Olaguer said the raids could have contributed to a significant decrease in the prison’s electricity consumption.

A study made following the raids and the confiscation of contraband – which include appliances and gadgets – in the last three weeks showed that the NBP’s power consumption dropped by around 10 percent.