Philippines may cut number of police generals to 25

THE PHILIPPINE government on Tuesday said it is seeking to reform the police bureaucracy by trimming the number of its generals to 25 from 133.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said it’s working with the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Public Administration for the reform.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) is “top-heavy,” Interior Secretary Juanito Victor C. Remulla, Jr. told a news briefing after a Cabinet meeting with President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., citing the need to “flatten the administration.”

“I think we have 133 generals, and I want to whittle the number down to 25 to make the organization flat,” he said in mixed English and Filipino. “These are some of the recommendations that we’re going to make together with the UP College of Public Administration.”

Mr. Remulla said the PNP is facing “redundancies,” particularly generals who have no particular commands. He also cited police commanders who don’t even have people under them.

“We have a lot of redundancies that we need to trim down.”

Mr. Remulla said affected general would be encouraged to take early retirement by next year. “They are all soldiers,” he said when asked if the move could demoralize staff. “They follow orders.”

He also said the DILG would work with several government institutions including the Commission on Audit and Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines to cut hours spent on signing documents to as short as an hour per week from the usual 12 hours.

“We want to work with various agencies to cut that down from 12 hours a week to one hour a week for the signing of documents of mayors. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of mental energy and it wastes a lot of the leaders’ time and resources to do that,” he said.

He said local governments should boost their digitization efforts to boost efficiency. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza