Some of the important “mission orders” of newly-appointed Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Debold Sinas are spelled out in the “performance guarantees” that the PNP has attached to its P190.8 billion budget request for 2021, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said.

High in the PNP “promissory note” is a maximum response time of 15 minutes from the time a call for help is received, Recto said.

Also in the PNP performance guarantees are the reduction of the “national crime index rate by 6 percent, ramping up the crime solution efficiency by 7 percent and increasing the number of arrested high value targets by 5 percent,” Recto said.

Recto said performance guarantees of an agency form part of the General Appropriations Act. “This is a budget reform measure which pegs countable deliverables to pesos received. So kung ano pangako, kasama sa batas.”

Recto said he is supporting President Duterte’s decision to name the PMA Class of 1987 graduate from Mindanao as Camilo Cascolan’s replacement.

“I think he should use that controversy he was embroiled in earlier this year as a powerful motive to prove his critics wrong,” Recto said.

Another “budget promise” which the PNP is bound to deliver is to increase the recruitment of commissioned and non-commissioned officers by 5 percent.

There are 30,522 “vacant and unfilled” positions in the national police, Recto explained. “If you fill just half of these, you can send 10 more policemen to every town in the country.”

But Recto said it is not only in the future budget where PNP’s to-do list is found, but on audit reports on how its previous budgets were spent.

“’Yung balance—kung meron pa—sa higit P1 billion na ibinigay ng PNP sa Philippine International Trading Corporation para pambili ng mga gamit, kailangan niya ring habulin,” he said.

But if many have already been procured, the new PNP chief should ensure these are properly maintained, “especially patrol cars whose lifespan can be extended if the PNP will hire more non-uniformed personnel who can drive and maintain these.”

Sinas, he said, should also accelerate the program to equip officers and patrol cars with body and dashboard cameras.

He said at the rate the PNP was buying bodycams, “it would take 100 years” to provide every policeman with one, or “20 years if the target is to equip just 1 in 5 policemen.”

Set to reach his mandatory retirement age of 56 by May next year, Recto said Sinas should set as parting gift to his men the full blast construction of the PNP Medical Plaza, for which P1.147 billion is appropriated in next year’s budget.