AROUND 5,300 personnel from the National Capital Region Police Office will be deployed to secure the public during the observance of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day next week, NCRPO chief Director Oscar Albayalde said.
Albayalde said there would be “skeletal deployment starting Sunday and full deployment on Monday. More or less 5,300 would be deployed apart from the 1,900 barangay tanods who would be helping us as well as the civilian volunteers.”
Albayalde and Quezon City Police District head Chief Supt. Guillermo Eleazar inspected bus terminals, malls, and the LRT station in Cubao in the run up to the long vacation, with thousands going to their respective provinces north and south of the capital.
Albayalde said they were assuming a high threat level, especially in Metro Manila where almost 16 million of the 106- million population of the country live, as the public remember their departed loved ones and with the upcoming Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit next month.
“The threat level is notches higher and we are assuming this level in Metro Manila because of the religious festivity and the summit of the 10-member Asean,” he said in Filipino.
He added they had intensified their intelligence gathering.
In the meantime, police authorities said bus and ferry terminals in the capital region began to swell as early as Friday, with provincial commuters beginning their exodus to the provinces to mark All Saints’ Day in their hometowns.
In Metro Manila, some bus terminals have indicated they would bring in additional buses to accommodate passengers, but stopped short of saying how many buses exactly they would bring in to help ferry passengers.
Other bus terminals in Manila were starting to be similarly crowded, with “walk-in passengers” flocking there for a chance ride to their home provinces.