IN DEFENSE OF TAMBAYS

– Members of the Akbayan Youth hang out in a street in Kalayaan, Quezon City, as they denounce the police crackdown on tambays or vagrants. Close to 7,300 tambays have been rounded up as of Wednesday.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) yesterday denied that there is a required number of arrested persons per day in the government’s intensified campaign against vagrants, bystanders / street loiterers or ‘tambays’.

Senior Superintendent Benigno Durana Jr., PNP Spokesperson, exclaimed that there are no day-to-day quota given to police in arresting ‘tambays’, whom authorities said are the usual violators of city ordinances.

“No such thing as quota!” Durana told the Manila Bulletin.

The allegations stemmed from the post of social media user JiggsDexter Fuentes-Lopoz in Facebook last Monday (June 18) regarding the arrest of at least eight men whom he claimed are porters and stevedores working in a Manila pier.

Going after violators Manila Police District (MPD) Spokesperson Erwin Margarejo said he cannot confirm whether or not the arrested men are indeed pier workers as he has yet to look into the report of the operation.

Margarejo, however, maintained that the anti-‘tambay’ operations of the city police are directed towards violators of various city ordinances.

The said ordinances include prohibition from drinking alcoholic beverages in public places, urinating and smoking in public places, roaming around shirtless (half-naked), and loitering, especially for minors late at night.

7,291 nabbed, so far

Relatedly, the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) said that a total of 7,291 “tambays” who violated various city ordinances have already been arrested in Metro Manila alone from 5 a.m. of June 13 to 5 a.m. of June 20.

With the big volume of arrests daily, one problem that the NCRPO has to deal with is the overcongestion of prison cells in the metro.