The Philippine National Police counts on a total number of 228,000 personnel to maintain peace and order through the country whose population now stands at approximately 114 million.
For comparison, in 2017 or seven years ago, the PNP had 160,000 personnel while the total population stood then at 104 million.
If the ideal police-to-population ratio is 1 cop for 500 people then and now, the PNP has already achieved its goal and can adequately perform its basic mission to serve the protect the public.
But isn’t the PNP too top-heavy for its own good?
Newly confirmed by the Commission on Appointments, Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla thinks so, and therefore wants to whittle down the number of police generals from 153 to 25.
While that piece of bad news is likely to send shivers down the spines of those likely to be affected by the downsizing of the PNP top brass, Secretary Remulla, however, has given an assurance that no one will be fired. “We are not firing anyone. We are not removing anyone. We are waiting for their retirement. And we will formulate a policy whether or not we will replace the generals who are retiring.”
This should allay fears of any grumblings in the top echelon of the PNP.
The DILG chief wants the agency to study whether the star rank is really necessary or deserving in every position, or whether a colonel would suffice. This would be an ongoing process, he said.
Earlier, Remulla said he wanted to trim the number of generals as part of his efforts to reform the PNP, which he described as currently “very top-heavy” and is in need of streamlining to “flatten” the organization. He cited as an example the case of the PNP’s National Capital Regional Police Office (NCRPO), which is currently headed by a police general while his deputy is also a police general.
“Why do you have two generals with the same rank occupying a position higher than the other? The area police command, nine of them now with three personnel behind them,” he asked.
The new DILG chief deserves support in his plan to review the promotion process in the PNP, where promotions are made every three years, compared with that in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, where promotions are made every five years.
Remulla is correct in pointing out that the PNP has become “very bloated” and promotion to general “has become a right rather than a privilege…I propose that it should be based on merit and need and function.”
That is how it should be. But at the same time, streamlining the PNP to make it a lean and mean institution should boost rather than diminish the morale and welfare of the country’s main law enforcement agency.
