LAWMAKER BATS FOR ‘INDEPENDENT’ PNPA

HOUSE Minority Leader and 4Ps party-list Rep. Marcelino “Nonoy” Libanan batted for the passage of a legislation that will strengthen the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) as a self-governing public higher educational institution.

LIBANAN fiLED HOUSE BILL 3507 or the proposed “PNPA Charter of 2022” to build up the school that produces commissioned lieutenants for the country’s 202,000-strong police force.

“In the years ahead, we are counting on the PNPA to produce the best and the brightest law en

FORCEMENT OFfiCERS IMBUED WITH exceptional leadership qualities and the highest standards of professional competence and personal integrity,” he said on Sunday.

Libanan’s bill guarantees that the PNPA will enjoy academic freedom, in accordance with the 1987 Constitution’s mandate for all higher learning institutions to determine for themselves “who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”

At present, all PNPA graduates earn a Bachelor of Science in Public Safety and are commissioned as police lieutenants, or as inspectors of the Bureau of Fire Protection and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology.

Under Libanan’s bill, the PNPA will autonomously provide advanced instruction and specialized education in public safety, social defense, internal security, human rights and other relevant fiELDS OF STUDY.

It will also establish plans, policies, programs, curricula, and standards of teaching and training, and will create, develop and implement a system of faculty placement, promotion and development.

Under the bill, the PNPA will be governed by a nine-member board of trustees, with the secretary of the Interior and Local Government and the chief of the Philippine National Police sitting as chairman and co-chairman, respectively.

The Commission on Higher Education’s chairman, the National Police Commission’s vice chairman and the PNPA Alumni Association Inc.’s chairman will also sit as members of the board of trustees.

The rest of the trustees will be composed of the chairmen of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education; Senate Committee on Higher, Technical and Vocational Education; House Committee on Public Order and Safety; and the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs.

The PNPA currently does not have a governing board. It is being supervised by a “command group” composed of a director, a deputy director and a chief of staff who are all police generals.