The Philippine National Police (PNP) has strengthened alliance with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to prevent the last attempts of scammers in using unregistered SIM cards for illegal money-making activities before the April 26 deadline of registration.
Based on the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) Registration Act, all SIM cards must be registered before April 26 this year and all those that would not meet the deadline will be deactivated.
PNP chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin, Jr. said part of the strengthened partnership is the conduct of DICT-initiated seminars for PNP personnel, particularly those assigned to the police's anti-cybercrime units, to equip policemen with appropriate knowledge in running after online scammers and other criminal elements.
"The role of the PNP is to investigate, file the appropriate charges against the violators and we expect the DICT to help us in the investigation of these cases," said Azurin.
"We also encourage the DICT to help us in the awareness campaign, particularly on scams. So these are the things that the PNP and the DICT would focus on to protect the public," he added.
For his part, PNP-Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG) director Brig. Gen. Joel Doria said they have already intensified the monitoring of various modus operandi, particularly those being perpetrated using unregistered SIM cards.
"The scammers are now also working double time because of the SIM card registration deadline. But we are monitoring all the fraud perpetrated through the use of SIM cards and as of December 2022 to January 2023, we have recorded cases," said Doria.
The SIM Registration Act, or the Republic Act 11934, was signed into law in October last year in a move to stop the prevalence of scams and other illegal activities using SIM cards.
The PNP is among the agencies which aggressively lobbied and fought for it in the past years.