Press Release
March 7, 2007

Recto wants quota of new women cops hiked to 1,000 a year

With one case of violence against women reported every 70 minutes in the country, Sen. Ralph Recto has called for the hiring of more policewomen to run Womens Desks in police stations.

While he lauded the recruitment of 600 women officers every year from 2006 to 2010, the level is still not enough, given the countrys rising population , Recto said .

At present, 20 percent or 600 of the 3,000 cops brought into the force annually is reserved for women.

Recto wants the affirmative action quota hiked to 1,000, and to correspondingly raise the PNP recruitment ceiling of all police officers to 5,000 a year.

Hiring the 2,000 additional cops would cost the government P234 million a year, Recto said. The payroll cost of the 400 additional lady cops will be around P93 million , which given the good tax collection of the government is quite affordable on its part.

This year , phase two of a five-year plan to hire 15,000 policemen will be implemented. The salary of 3,000 rookies, designated as Police Officer 1, will cost taxpayers P585 million a year .

On top of this, government will buy 500 police cars worth P335 million and 5,000 firearms out of a P176 million fund for this purpose .

The new entrants to the PNP will raise its personnel strength to 122,893 , which Recto described as a figure far from the ideal 178,000 , based on a one policeman per 500 persons ratio.

For 2003, the National Statistics Office tallied 8,011 reported cases of violence against women.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as many assaults go unreported, Recto said.

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