Prying eyes heads toward the matters of Bohol District Jail after a whistleblower stirred probe on a number of facilities of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) in other areas of the country.

Valenzuela City Jail Inspector Angelina Lumba Bautista disclosed to The Chronicle that the memorandum of agreement entered into by the past provincial administration and BJMP should also be looked into.

Bautista said she was assured by a provincial official that the matter will be given attention after their talk last week.

Bautista cited the food allowance, in particular, as the starting point of a possible investigation as she pointed at the pattern of BJMP entering agreeents with local government units.

The jail inspector filed a complaint against BJMP officials on alleged misuse of funds.

She said BJMP has allocation for food of the inmates and it should be looked into if there is no similar allocation from the LGUs or it could be double allocation of government funds.

In the process of gathering documents related to the funds allocated to BDJ (formerly Bohol Detention and Rehabilitation Center), Bautista told The Chronicle that she saw a similar pattern after learning from old news items that the provincial government of Bohol under the past administration entered into a memorandum of agreement with BJMP.

It could be possible the funds went to unscrupulous past officials, Bautista added.

It is on this suspicion that Bautista tried to reach to present provincial officials to investigate or cooperate in the investigation of higher officials.

Bautista cited the MOA entered in September 2008 regarding the transfer of the management, supervision and control of BDRC to BJMP and since then called BDJ.

The MOA supposedly had been aimed at relieving “the provincial government of the responsibilities of jail management, transferring it to the government agency that has the mandate to exercise direct supervision and control over all municipal, district and city jails and therefore has the technical capability and expertise to do so”.

However, the province provides “the BJMP with the amount it is currently appropriating for the maintenance and operation of the jail for the subsistence allowance of the inmates and the maintenance and improvement of the jail facility, as well as continue to pay for the power and water bills even after the lapse of the transition period”.

It is the transition period that Bautista wanted the investigation to start with.