Sober for a decade, Kenneth Tee has helped hundreds of drug dependents kick the habit in a facility run by incoming president Rodrigo Duterte's men.
The sprawling facility shows a compassionate side of the tough-talking mayor's war against drugs, which human rights groups claim involves the deployment of vigilante death squads.
“Perhaps, others can learn from my experience, from my recovery as a drug addict,” the 42-year-old Tee, who was rehabilitated in the same center, told ABS-CBN News.
Tee, who got hooked on drugs in high school, supervises "house stewards," or those assigned to look after patients at the Davao City Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Drug Dependents in Bago Oshiro village, some 17 kilometers from the city center.
The facility has a success rate of 80 percent, meaning most of its rehabilitated patients had gone on to live productive lives, according to its manager, Dr. Gene Gulanes.
Gulanes acknowledged that there were those who feared that drug users would still be executed by the so-called Davao Death Squad even if they agreed to go through rehabilitation.
"But it’s not true," he told ABS-CBN News, noting that the center has in fact reformed around 1,300 drug dependents, including a 10-year-old boy.
Source: ABS-CBN NEWS
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