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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Friday, January 27, 2017
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BACOLOD City – This city will be teeming with police officers when it hosts two meetings during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit in March.
More than 2,000 — or “roughly half” of the Negros Island Region police force — will be deployed to Bacolod, according to Chief Superintendent Renato Gumban, regional police director.
As far as security preparations are concerned, the city is “90 percent” ready, Gumban told the press yesterday.
Task Group Bacolod, tasked to carry out preparations for the Asean Summit meetings, held contingency planning in a hotel here.
Gumban himself is the commander of the task force.
Bacolod is preparing for one of the largest gatherings of diplomats from Asean-member countries. The Philippines is hosting the Summit in time for the association’s 50th anniversary this year.
Around 160 delegates are expected to come over for two meetings, from March 14 to 16 and from March 21 to 24. The topics remain unknown as of this writing, according to the Public Information Office.
Around 2,300 police officers will secure the routes to the venue and the venue itself, said Gumban.
Those from Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental police offices and Philippine Army soldiers will reinforce the Bacolod City Police Office (BCPO), he said.
While they have not monitored any security threat so far, Gumban said they consider having mobile phone signals jammed as precaution.
Detonating an improvised explosive device using a mobile phone as trigger is a common modus in terror attacks targeting crowds, authorities said.
As part of the preparations, local officials inspected the Circumferential Road, Lacson Street and Araneta Street on Tuesday.
A composite team will demolish illegal structures and ban parking along these major thoroughfares, Mayor Evelio Leonardia stressed.
Officials from the Department of Public Works and Highways, the BCPO and the City Legal Office joined the inspection.
Leonardia said they are making sure all roads to and from the Bacolod-Silay Airport are “presentable and orderly.”/PN
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