Camp Brig Gen Salipada Pendatun, Maguindanao –Most of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region’s 118 towns do not have municipal police station (MPS) buildings compliant with Philippine National Police (PNP) standards.
PNP Director-General Guillermo Eleazar has been doing rounds of surprise visits to MPS, as well as to provincial and regional headquarters nationwide, apparently to check on standards PNP prescribes on headquarters and MPS buildings.
Brig Gen Eden Ugale, Police Regional Office BAR director, said the region’s state of MPS formed part of PNP’s “institutional challenges” that have existed long before the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Ugale said with only a very short stint of office tenure, PNP chiefs could only do as much until a PNP Modernization Program Act is passed by Congress.
Indeed, the BARMM government has offered to construct MPS buildings in 60 municipalities from a budget surplus in 2020 and 31 more MPS buildings charged to its current budgetary provisions, said lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, BARMM spokesman and interior and local government minister.
Sinarimbo said BARMM heeds calls upon the local government units to do their share in having the 100 percent attack-resilient MPS buildings for police personnel at community service, particularly during the pandemic.
According to PNP standards, the upgraded 2-story MPS design with roof-deck has a floor area of more or less 288 square meters with a dimension of 12m x 8m and is built at P 4.8 million, based on current materials prices and cost of labor.
This should have been part of the PNP Modernization Program under House Bill 2199 authored by Pangasinan Rep. Leopoldo Bataoil, a former police official, and HB 2518 authored by Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, both titled, “An Act Providing for the PNP Modernization Program and for Other Purposes.”
The proposed measures have since been referred to for study by a Technical Working Group, and a Substitute Bill has been submitted by the Committee on Public Order and Safety as of 2014, according to the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department
On Friday, the BARMM’s Ministry of the Interior and Local Government under Minister Sinarimbo sent here a technical team of a civil engineer and an architect for a series of dialogue and site-visiting with police officials and local planners.
Lt Col Lincoln Buklasan, chief of the PRO BAR Engineering Services, met Engineer Abibazar Sali, MILG project development officer, and Architect Gloryrose Metilla, on BARMM plans to build standard MPS buildings in all 91 towns that have either substandard MPS buildings or have none.
A PRO BAR list of MPS buildings in BARMM showed that only 27 of the region’s 118 municipalities have standard MPS buildings. The rest either have buildings for a workplace that are below the PNP standard (69) or do not have MPS buildings (22).
Ugale said undoubtedly a better designed and well-built MPS enhances the police capability to protect the citizens and the communities.
In the PRO-BAR’s list, towns with MPS that are neither categorized into Types-A, B, or C, or the OS-Type, are cited with a “no MPS” remark.
LGUs with no standard MPS either fell or had almost fallen to terror attacks in the past.
Marawi City and Butig town, for instance, where policemen were overrun by Maute terrorists in 2017 both have no standard MPS buildings.
In Basilan, Lamitan City has none, and so are Sumisip, Lantawan, Tipo-Tipo and Tuburan towns yet to have standard MPS buildings, according to the PRO-BAR PNP engineering services’ list.
In Maguindanao, Datu Salibo and Sharif Saduna Mustapha towns which are frequented by extremist groups and clashes with government forces, also have no MPS buildings.
Datu Piang in Maguindanao which almost fell in last February’s terror attack will soon have its standard MPS building which is being constructed by the BARMM Ministry of Public Works (MPW) under Minister Architect Eduard Uy Guerra, in collaboration with MILG-BARMM and local and police authorities.
MILG-BARMM officials said a construction, in collaboration with MPW and the PNP PRO-BAR, is ongoing of a standard MPS in Ampatuan town where the gruesome Maguindanao Massacre took place 11 years ago.
Ugale said the updated PNP standards for regional police headquarters has a prescribed 18-meter x 28-meter floor area dimension of a two-story edifice and with uniform architectural design provided by the PNP National Headquarters.
Of Sulu’s 19 municipalities 18 are considered “no MPS” in the PNP list, because the buildings the policemen use in those towns for administrative and operational functions fall below PNP standards.
But Jolo is the only town in BARMM that has the Type-A Standard MPS, while the other 18 municipalities of Sulu either do not have the Type-B, Type-C nor the Old Standard type MPS, or have none at all.