{"id":19880,"date":"2018-10-26T05:24:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T05:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19880"},"modified":"2018-10-26T05:24:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T05:24:21","slug":"philippines-duterte-sacks-top-customs-officials-over-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19880","title":{"rendered":"Philippines: Duterte sacks top customs officials over drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte<\/a>\u00a0removed all top customs bureau officials, including the chief, a day after the agency failed to intercept more than a tonne of drugs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Duterte said on Thursday that Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapena would be reassigned to the role of the director general of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority – a\u00a0government training agency in the Philippines<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to local media, he described the transfer as a “promotion”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The commissioners are out, the department heads are out,” he said during a speech at a ceremony commemorating the founding of the coastguard.<\/p>\n

Duterte announced he was appointing Rey Guerrero, a retired army general who is currently the administrator of Maritime Industry Authority,\u00a0to take over the bureau and soldiers and members of the coastguard would help him.<\/p>\n

“I know that you [Guerrero] are reluctant to – I know that you’re happy there [in Marina] and you are contented, so I’ve heard, but the demands of public service and the need for honest men requires your presence there. Good luck,” he said, according to Rappler, a Filipino news site.<\/p>\n

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Philippines’ Duterte vows to continue ‘chilling’ war on drugs<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Surprise new posting<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Lapena, who was at the ceremony, expressed surprise by his removal but thanked Duterte for his new posting.<\/p>\n

The retired police general has been under pressure since customs authorities failed to detect a shipment estimated at more than a tonne of methamphetamines being smuggled into the country in July.<\/p>\n

Drug enforcement agents later found traces of the drugs in the containers in which they were smuggled, but the drugs were gone.<\/p>\n

Duterte did not refer to that case on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The previous head of the customs bureau was removed after a huge amount of drugs were smuggled into the country in May last year.<\/p>\n

Duterte has made a bloody fight against drugs<\/a> the centrepiece of his administration since he won a presidential election in 2016. Thousands of people have been killed<\/a>\u00a0in the crackdown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte\u00a0removed all top customs bureau officials, including the chief, a day after the agency failed to intercept more than a tonne of drugs. Duterte said on Thursday that Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapena would be reassigned to the role of the director general of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority – a\u00a0government training…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}