Cebu’s dancing inmates turn campaign posters into grocery bags

• Source:http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?nid=2&rid=895228
• Wednesday, June 15, 2016

(PNA), LAP/EB/EDS

CEBU CITY, June 15 (PNA) -- Cebu’s famous dancing inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) in Barangay Kalunasan, Cebu City, are now turning campaign posters in the last elections into grocery bags.

The project, a brainchild of Cebu Governor Hilario Davide III and his wife Jobel, recycles tarpaulins used in campaign posters in the May 9 local and presidential elections by turning them into grocery bags.

“The income may not be big, but at least, we earned something which we can use for buying our basic needs such as soap,” said Adonis Comendador, one of the nine inmates involved in the project.

The CPDRC has acquired six electric sewing machines for the project and tapped the help of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to teach inmates on how to sew tarpaulins into grocery bags.

The inmates will turn pre-campaign billboard tarpaulins into tents.

This is the latest addition to the livelihood projects implemented in the CPDRC, which included a bakery, an automobile repair and maintenance shop and a facility for making house ornaments.

Among the ornaments made inside the facility are miniature galleons that are replicas of ships used by Spanish explorers in 16th century.

These are made by the group of Alex Hugo, the former spokesperson of the transport group Nakahiusang Driver sa Sugbu Nadsu (Nadsu) who was arrested by the police in 2008 for illegal possession of firearms and for allegedly being a member of the New People’s Army.

Other replicas made by Hugo’s group are churches, houses, fountains with Virgin Mary icons, parks with Magellan’s Cross and horse carriages and Santa Claus figures surrounded by Christmas trees.

The CPDRC inmates shot to fame when their mass dancing routine video was posted on YouTube.

They were soon featured in one of the shows of the late Michael Jackson and several international cable TV networks.

An independent filmmaker from Thailand filmed over the weekend at the CPDRC scenes for a movie that featured the life of a British national who was jailed in Thailand for three years.