Another brick of cocaine wrapped in a package, estimated to be worth P5.2 million, was found on Saturday afternoon by a passerby walking along the shoreline of Bagumbayan village in Paracale town in Camarines Norte, police said.
Chief Inspector Maria Luisa Calubaquib, Philippine National Police Bicol spokesman, said a resident, Norly Soriano, 46, noticed the brick-like item wrapped in a brown duct tape containing a white substance.
The package was turned over to the Provincial Crime Laboratory Office for examination, and the lab test found it was cocaine weighing 989.23 grams.
Meanwhile, the PNP on Monday said it will tap fishermen as conduits in the government’s anti-drug campaign, particularly in monitoring cocaine being dumped at sea.
PNP spokesman Bernard Banac said the collaboration of fishermen and residents in the coastal villages across the country would be a vital component in stopping the entry and proliferation of illegal drugs in the country through transshipment operations.
Calubaquib said the latest cocaine package recovered brings to three the packages found in the waters off Camarines Norte in a week.
The cocaine packages were discovered in the area on Feb. 10 and 11.
Calubaquib said the packages that were recovered had a cumulative total weight of 2.8 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of P15.1 million.
The first cocaine brick weighing one kilogram, worth P5.4 million, was fished out on Feb. 10 by a fisherman in the waters of Barangay Sula, Vinzons town, while the second package weighing 839 grams, worth P4.5 million, was found on the shore of Barangay Sabang, Vinzons, on Feb. 11.
Anti-narcotics authorities are still investigating the possible sources of the cocaine, which they said could have been from a cargo ship that might have sunk last year due to the storms off the waters of Samar province. With Francisco Tuyay
