A TOTAL of 754 Civil Security Personnel undergo training to ensure that government and city-owned facilities are fully prepared in case of terror attacks.
Public Safety and Security Command Center (PSSCC) chief Retired General Benito De Leon, during the Pulong-pulong ni Pulong media forum held Tuesday, June 6, bared that the training was held as directed by Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio.
"We have opened training of the Civil Security Unit (CSU). They are the front line security and safety personnel of the government in government-owned and city-owned facilities. We want to up the competence of the civil security personnel so that incidents such as that will not happen in the city and we should be able to respond immediately," he said.
He said that CSU will assume many of the tasks of the Task Force Davao (TFD) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) like checking baggage.
"So that we can free our police and soldiers to do more important and critical tasks that include running after terrorists in the area," he said.
The training will be a weeklong event, and to ensure that the city will not be short of CSU during the training, the group was divided into two and some personnel from PNP and Armed Forces of the Philippines were asked to cover for the services rendered by CSU while the training is going on.
Two training sites are the Almendras Gym Davao City Recreation Center and Calinan Gym.
"We have assembled personnel from military, police and other agencies, as well as from law. Pati pari mayroon to review and re-orient of their role as security personnel, tapos may practicals din sila for self-defense. Maraming lectures on legal aspect, ethical aspect of it ‘yung martial arts and papaano mag-inspect ‘yung profiling)," he added.
During the forum, Councilor Nilo Abellera said that security agencies all over the city will be called up to check the preparedness of the security agencies operating within the city.
"Yung nangyari sa Resorts World, makita naman natin dun na klarong security lapse ang nangyari ayaw nating mangyari yun sa davao city that is why ipapatawag natin lahat ang mga concerned agencies especially Supervisory office for security and investigation agencies (Socia)–PNP," he said.
He said that the meeting will be done to "check and re-check" the companies on their security preparedness. As for security equipment, Abellera said that village chiefs within the city are instructed to install CCTV cameras in converging areas of people within their barangays.
He also said that walk-through scanners and x-ray baggage scanners are already included in the P95 million worth of security equipment that was forwarded by PSSCC chair De Leon to Mayor Sara.
Abellera said that the Mayor committed to purchase five x-ray baggage scanners and five walk-through scanners for the city. But Abellera said that it will still depend on the budget because other equipment will also be purchased aside from the needed security equipment.
"Depending on the budget kasi hindi pa kaya lahat, kasi hindi lang yun ang kailangan natin. More or less P600,000 each for walk-through scanners, and P1.5 million each for X-ray baggage scanner ang plano nating bilhin," Abellera added. (KVC)