By Aaron Recuenco
The Philippine National Police (PNP) will be recruiting additional 15,000 policemen this year in a move to address the gap of the standard one policeman for every 500 people in the country.
Currently with the 187,000 uniformed personnel, the police to population ratio is one policeman for every 651 people, said Deputy Director General Archie Gamboa, the Chief Directorial Staff of the PNP.
(MANILA BULLETIN)
“Our projection is that by the end of this year, we will have 205,000 uniformed personnel… so we are nearing to the standard policeman to population ratio,” said Gamboa.
Gamboa said the PNP regularly recruits 10,000 every year and the additional 5,000 is to fill up the vacancies as a result of retirement, resignation, attrition and even those being kicked out of the service.
The official said the job vacancy in the PNP is competitive on the aspect of salary, what with the big increase in the monthly salary of policemen after it was approved by President Duterte.
From the monthly 15,000 salary, new policemen with the rank of Police Officer I has now a basic pay of P30,000.
The improvement of the law enforcement services, however, does not end on the recruitment as Gamboa said they are also procuring equipment for the PNP.
For instance, he said they have to purchase more guns in order to ensure that all policemen, including the new ones, would have their own guns.
The last time that the PNP has 100-percent gun-to-policeman ratio was three years ago as there have been delay in the purchase due to bidding processes.
“But as of this year, we are buying almost 60,000 to 70,000 units. If we will be able to pursue that then we will be able to fill up the gun shortage, we will have one firearm for every policeman,” said Gamboa.
He said they hope that the guns would be delivered this year.