By Eddie Barrita
MANDAUE CITY, (PNA) — An P80-million center for children in conflict with the law (CICL) will soon rise on a 1.2-hectare lot in Sitio Dunggoan, Barangay Basak, this city.
Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes said the Hope for Mandaue CICL Center will also serve abandoned and abused children.
Cortes assured the project will be completed before his term ends in 2016.
“As a highly-urbanized city, we need to have a center for CICL,” he said.
Sarah Walker-Cortes, the mayor’s wife and chairperson of the Mandaue City Council for the Protection of Children (MCCPC), said their priority now is to construct the building for male CICLs.
Most child offenders in the city, she said, are boys.
Aside from children’s homes, the center will have an administration building, a halfway house, school buildings, a multipurpose building, playgrounds, a materials recovery facility and a water treatment pond.
Walker-Cortes said the idea to build a CICL was raised during the first year of her husband as mayor.
Maricel Yu, focal person of MCCPC, said the city already spent P4 million for the site development and P15 million for the first building.
She said the P16-million grant the city received from the National Government as a recipient of the Seal of Good Housekeeping Award will be spent on the project.
The CICL center can accommodate 30 boys and 30 girls at any given time, Yu said.
The center will accept children 17 years old and below.
Walker-Cortes said the center will have houseparents, social workers and psychologists.