New police officers up for election deployment
The existing force of Police Regional Office (PRO) VI got a boost from 47 officers who took their oath of office Monday at Camp Delgado, Iloilo City.
But before seeing actions in the field, they will first undergo several trainings.
PNP Regional Director Chief Supt. Isagani Cuevas said that prior to deployment, the 47 new officers – 37 male and 10 females – will first undergo the Officers’ Basic Course.
“After that, they shall undergo the PNP Scout so that they will be properly given the training that they would be utilized in the conduct of police operations, especially during this election period,” Cuevas said.
Although a police officer needs a basic six-month course before deployment, the region’s top cop said that their training would be enough to perform election duties.
“Pwede na sila for elections. We need personnel. Usually, they could act as chiefs of police for a town or a precinct command. But for the moment, they would only act as deputy chief due to lack of training,” Cuevas revealed.
It was gathered that PRO-6 had 66 applicants for 47 quota allocation for Western Visayas .
The applicants underwent series of examinations, from physical agility tests to panel interview.
The 47 lateral entrants are all licensed criminologists and have been in the police service for at least five years. They will be promoted to the rank of Police Inspector.
As per policy of the PNP, all uniformed personnel who are aspiring for the said program, must seek reassignment in any PRO to set a standard that all would-be line officers must be organic to the PRO or National Support Unit where they intend to apply for lateral entry. Said procedure will also solve the issue of transfer of assignment.
Due to lack of qualified applicants, two of the 47 lateral entrants who will be taking their oath are from Police Regional Office 7 based in Cebu City.
Meanwhile, during their oath taking, Cuevas reminded the new police officers to go out and “man the streets.”
“It might sound so easy but it’s not. Most of the personnel don’t like to report to offices,” he quipped citing, “nang pumasok ang karamihan sa atin, we profess to do our job kahit na i-assign sa Tawi-Tawi. But once we get accepted, ayaw nang mag-duty... ayaw nang tumupad sa sinumpaan nila.”
That’s why, Cuevas said, they have resorted to the 7-9-7 duty scheme in tghe daily accounting of personnel.
Cuevas introduced the duty shift scheme to ensure enough number of cops to man the police station and render police assistance.
The new scheme practically erased the long time police practice of a “one-day duty, two-day off” duty shift and other duty shift scheme similar to it.
Under the 7-9-7 duty scheme, the personnel in a police station are divided into three teams. 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 Team C reports from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. They will be rotated every week.
Each personnel shall 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 on Tuesday and so forth.
