Couple yields some P500k worth of shabu in Kidapawan City — police

^{Sachets of suspected shabu weighing 60 grams with street value of half a million confiscated from big-time drug dealers in Kidapawan. —W.A. Magbanua}

KIDAPAWAN CITY—A couple yielded close to half a million worth of suspected illegal drugs, commonly known as shabu, in a raid by anti-illegal drug agents from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao on Tuesday afternoon.

Superintendent Leo Ajero, Kidapawan City Police director, said the raiding team, armed with a search warrant, raided the house where the target big-time dealers were temporarily hiding.

Live-in partners Juvie Villanueva and Renato Padernal are considered top 1 drug target in Kidapawan City and top 5 in the entire province of Cotabato, based on the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency's list, Ajero said.

^{Live-in partners Juvie Villanueva and Renato Padernal during their arrest in a raid on their rented house in Saniel Subdivision on Tuesday afternoon. —W.A. Magbanua}

He also disclosed that in Tuesday's raid PDEA agents confiscated nine big sachets containing high-grade shabu and a caliber-.45 pistol from the suspects.

Confiscated "shabu" weighed at least 60 grams, with street value close to P500,000, he said.

Kidapawan City's Mayor Joseph Evangelista lauded the PDEA agents for tracking down the couple.       

“They had been under surveillance for the past months due to their alleged involvement in illegal drug trade in the city and even in other towns in Cotabato,” Evangelista said.

The mayor also revealed that the couple sells at least 200 to 300 grams of shabu weekly, and that their operations even reached the nearby provinces of Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat.

He said the Dangerous Drug Board pegged the price of every gram of shabu at P7,500 in the streets.

“Meaning, if they sold 300 grams per week the exact cost of the illegal drugs proliferating in the city and in the province is close to P2.2 million per week.”

The mayor has called on PDEA to conduct an in-depth investigation and possible arrest of masterminds or the drug lords behind the illegal drug trade in the city.

But he said, the local law enforcement authorities have not monitored any presence of illegal drug laboratory in the city, which he said is only being used by dealers as transshipment area. —LBG, GMA News