DAVAO CITY – Senator Ralph Recto said the next President should make the campaign of violence against women a national priority and to immediately fill in 23,820 vacant posts in the Philippine National Police.
“With one woman or child raped every 50 minutes, whoever is sworn in as President in June 30 should declare as a national priority combatting violence against women,” Recto said in a statement Friday, April 22.
Recto said, filling up vacant PNP posts will “put more boots on street patrol.”
He said filling these posts will give the nation’s 1,489 towns an additional 12 policemen each, “and 41 more policemen for each of the 145 cities.”
The first step in fighting crime “is a police surge,” , adding that the PNP has 174,410 authorized uniformed personnel positions of which only 150,590 are filled.
The Commission on Population estimates that the country’s population will reach 104 million this year, he said.
“Then we have a one cop per 690 persons ratio,” Recto said.
Recto said the official rape statistics underscore the need to hire more cops and buy more police equipment.
“Last year, rape cases reported to the police and other law enforcement agencies reached 10,298, up from 9,887 in 2014,” he said.
But the real number could be higher as some cases go undocumented, said Recto.
Recto also cited the PNP report in 2014 where it recorded 40,220 Violence Against Women (VAW) incidents and 38,269 cases of abuse inflicted on children.
“This means every six minutes, a child or a woman is being hurt somewhere,” Recto said.
“So let us recruit more cops. Let us make sure that they are sent to do street patrol. Let us also make sure that every station has a Women’s and Children’s Desk,” he said. (davaotoday.com)
