PRO6 at pace with PNP Integrated Transformation Program
The Philippine National Police gears up for integrated transformation to resolve organizational dysfunctions.
This, PNP’s 10-year Integrated Transformation Program is considered as organization’s roadmap for winning the public’s trust, confidence and support in making this country a more peaceful and orderly place to live, work, invest, and do business.
PNP ITP was launched in 2005.
One prominent project related to the program is the maximization of police visibility in the streets to deter crimes and other threats.
In Western Visayas, this visible presence of cops in the community is achieved with the implementation of 7-9-7 duty shifts, a pet project of Police Regional Office 6 (PRO6) director, Police Chief Superintendent Isagani R. Cuevas.
Under this scheme, police personnel in police stations are divided in three groups and functioned as follows: Team A reports to duty from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Team B reports from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Team C reports from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. They shall be rotated weekly. Each personnel will have a day off once weekly. In this scheme, all numbers 1 in Teams A, B and C will have their break on Monday. The numbers 2 will be on Tuesday and so forth.
“This duty scheme replaced the old practice of ‘one-day duty, two-day off’ or one-day duty, one-day off’ which were prejudicial to police operations,” Cuevas said.
Last year’s low crime rate and high crime solution efficiency of region’s police force is credited to this innovative practice.
Recently, the PNP established another strategy to combat crime, insurgency and terrorism.
Pursuant to Letter of Instruction (LOI) 22/09 dubbed as “Bayanihan”, the PNP will create Barangay Peace-Keeping Operatives (BPKO) and establish Barangay Peace Keeping Action Team (BPAT).
The BPKO is considered as a “catch-all” strategy in the maintenance of peace and order. And, the BPAT is composed of different groups/sectors in the community as force multipliers. They shall be put under the supervision and control of Police Community Precincts (PCPs).
Under the perspective, the PNP recognizes the role of barangay tanods, bantay bayan, civilian volunteer organizations, brgy auxiliaries, NGOs and other people’s organizations that can be utilized as force multipliers in the fights against criminality, insurgency and terrorism.
This project is a realization that anti-crime strategies and concepts being employed by the PNP in the past years did not work well. The reason: those were merely adaptation or revised versions of strategies and concepts being adhered to in other countries.
Hence, PRO6 held last week an echo seminar with Provincial/City directors and heads of mobile groups for the purpose of establishing BPAT in their respective areas of responsibility. (POIII Francisco B. Lindero Jr)