Oro pushing for Barangay Tanod Committee
THE City Council has passed an ordinance creating a Barangay Tanod Committee in a bid to strengthen the interplay between village officials and police in their effort to stop proliferation of crimes and illegal drugs in Cagayan de Oro villages.
City Mayor Oscar Moreno said this is in response to President Rodrigo Duterte’s call to all local chief executives and the 2,000 barangay chairmen of Northern Mindanao last week, to work together and collaborate very closely with the national government on the campaign of illegal drugs.
Moreno called the ordinance a milestone, pointing out that this is the first time that such move was done since he assumed mayor in 2013.
He recalled how little support he received from barangay officials and thus how limited his effort had become because of lack of cooperation among them.
“I would say this is providential because as a result of the barangay elections, we are now entering the third date in my journey as mayor of Cagayan de Oro. Now, I’m looking up to greater collaboration, greater partnership between the city on one hand and the barangay government on the other, especially the addition of Councilor Alan Lim in the group,” he said.
“This would be a different scenario already different from my first term, where there would be reluctant or in some cases, afraid to collaborate with me,” he added.
The chairman of the committee is the chief of police of the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office (Cocpo) Senior Superintendent Nelson Aganon, while the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) will be the vice-chairman.
Moreno said with this new committee, the city government can recruit efficient and younger barangay tanods, and come up with an over-all strategy on how to curb criminality.
He said the committee will also set standards and qualifications in the selection process of barangay tanods.
“We have here beautiful interplay of the various levels of government, the PNP and DILG are part of the national level, the city is part of the local. We’ll have three levels of government working together to the barangay tanod development committee; Police as the chairman, DILG as the vice-chairman, the other function would be to provide the standards for the Barangay tanod all over the city—train them and supervise them, their appointments as barangay tanod would be vested to barangay council following the standards set by the committee,” Moreno said.
“We expect that we can mobilize all our barangay in the campaign against criminality and drugs and so on and make Cagayan de Oro a peaceful city.”
Moreno said the creation of this committee will also ensure that law enforcers implement the law properly and that abuse shall be responded immediately.
“I hope the people will
understand that this drive against illegal drugs, although there are a lot of comments about it, here in Cagayan de Oro, we are very particular on the respect of basic human rights,” he said.