The Philippine National Police (PNP) is nearing 50 percent of its target barely three months of its six-month deadline to account for all the drug pushers and users in the country.
But that is if the 1.8 million drug pushers and users declared by PNP chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa would be the benchmark. President Duterte earlier said that there are some 3.7 million Filipinos who are hooked to illegal drugs.
Based on the PNP data, a total of 712,730 suspected drug pushers and users have already surrendered since July 1 when the campaign against illegal drugs went all-out.
On the other hand, a total of 1,506 suspected pushers and users were killed while 16,891 were arrested in various police operations across the country.
The figures, however, do not include the 1,571 deaths perpetrated by suspected vigilante groups, most of them are being linked to illegal drugs.
Dela Rosa, however, expressed concerns on the rate of the illegal drugs war campaign in the past few weeks where the number of those surrendered remained stationary between 650,000 to 700,000 mark.
“We need to exert more effort, we need to be more aggressive in this campaign because we need to reach 1.8 million,” said dela Rosa. (Aaron B. Recuenco)