The Duterte administration’s maiden national budget proposal should include funds for the purchase of firearms for 16,140 “gunless” policemen and for the hiring of 23,820 officers, so that its law and order drive will not just focus on illegal drugs but on other crimes as well.

Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto said official reports point to a “manpower and material lack which call for more boots on the ground and more guns for policemen.”

Recto said the Commission on Audit’s (COA) latest audit on the Philippine National Police (PNP) showed that 16,140 policemen did not have service handguns as of the end of last year.

“The PNP has not attained a 100 percent issuance of short firearm to PNP uniformed personnel required,” the COA said in its PNP audit for 2015.

Out of “147,041 actual PNP uniformed personnel assigned to offices, units and regions”, only 124,738 have been issued short firearms, COA reported.

Some 623 officers were, however, using donated handguns while 3,654 officers could not be accounted for or have no record of having been issued service firearms, the audit body said.

COA said the PNP’s failure to achieve a 100 percent “arming rate” for its personnel violates a 1993 National Police Commission order mandating a one-gun-one-police ratio.

Recto said the PNP’s gun shortage would have been eased if it did not divert in 2012 a P336 million budget for gun procurement.

According to the same COA report, the amount was instead used to buy 20 patrol jeeps, one “Crime DataProcessing System” and an “Automated Fingerprint Identification System” costing P270 million.

The original procurement plan was to acquire 12,268 units of caliber 9-millimeter pistols costing P296 million, the COA said.

Recto said government should resume its gun acquisition plan because “the situation in which gunless policemen account for 11 percent of the force should not be allowed to continue.”

The senator also called for inclusion in the reported P3.3 trillion 2017 national budget funds for the “recruitment, salary and equipment” of 23,820 vacant positions in the PNP manpower table.

The PNP, he explained, has 174,410 “authorized uniformed personnel positions” of which only 150,590 are filled, according to an official Department of Budget and Management (DBM) document.

Just filling these posts, Recto said, will give the nation’s 1,489 towns an additional 12 policemen each, “and 41 more policemen for each of the 145 cities.”

“Malaking bagay ang dagdag na pulis,” Recto said. “Lahat ng bayan at siyudad sa Pilipinas nagrereklamo na kulang sila sa pulis.”

Based on the Commission on Population estimate that the country’s population will reach 104 million this year, “then we have a 1 cop per 690 persons ratio,” Recto said.

“But this is on paper, and on the assumption that all cops are on duty at the same time, all the time. May shifts yan, ang iba naka-leave, or schooling, or suspended, or naka-headquarters duty. So the actual number of cops on duty at any given time is really small,” Recto said.

“Yung mga pulis na ma-rerecruit natin, i-deploy natin sa mga komunidad. Hayaan nating magpatrolya para kapag nakita sila ng mga kriminal, may deterrent effect,” he said.

Noting that the PNP is focused on the war against illegal drugs, Recto sought to bring its attention to other crimes which must be stopped.

In 2015, there were 352 robberies and thefts, 28 rape cases, and 34 killings daily, he said.

“Last year, every six minutes, a child or a woman was being hurt somewhere. One murder or homicide is committed every 42 minutes. That would be 34 every 24 hours. ‘Yung nakaw, 352 cases kada araw,” Recto said.

“There were 128,389 cases of robbery, theft, carnapping and cattle-rustling last year. Or someone loses his bag, or her cellphone, or the family’s car or carabao to thieves or robbers every four minutes,” Recto said.

In addition, 12,900 vehicles were stolen last year,” Recto said, citing a PNP report.

The PNP also reported 9,643 murder cases and 2,835 homicide incidents in 2015.

“Walang duda na kaya itong pababain kung may dagdag na pulis, dagdag na gamit ng mga pulis, dagdag sweldo ng mga pulis,” Recto stressed.