A cursory interview by Sun Star Bacolod of some establishments in the city's commercial district revealed a common uneasiness towards the apparent rise in robbery and hold upping cases in the city.
Most of them lamented the low and erratic visibility of police forces especially in the commercial district, which they added have emboldened petty thieves and criminal gangs to stage even broad daylight and rush-hour criminal operations.
An initial compilation of city police crime records by Sun Star Bacolod revealed that a crime against property and persons averaged twice a week since January this year, and soared to almost three times a week beginning February.
Boy Zayco of Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce Inc. (MBCCI) affirmed the business anxiety saying that the police visibility is hardly felt thus leaving a vacuum for criminals to take advantage of.
Zayco however refrained to put the blame on the police because he said, "the ratio of police to the population is very wide caused principally by the apparent lack of budgetary and technical support from the city government."
The city leadership should give more budget to peace and order operations if it wants to reduce to manageable level the criminalities in the city; "this is important if we want to give the people a feeling of security and safety anytime of the day, and for our businesses to be truly secured and conducive to growth," Zayco added.
He also opined that as the city grows rapidly and thousands of people enter and leave the city everyday, the City Government together with the private sector, must invest more for internal security operations.
"This is also in view of the fact that there is so much poverty and hunger in rural areas that the normal consequence is for rural people to migrate to the city for odd jobs," he stressed.
Zayco on the other hand urged his fellow businessmen to invest more in making their business properties more secured and their customers safe during their business transactions.
He suggested that they also concern themselves not only with profit accumulation, but also investing on security facilities like hiring well-trained security guards, installing monitoring and surveillance equipments, and maybe, regular security drills for their workers and employees.
Zayco further urged the concerned police office to check and ensure that different security agencies in the city also invest on having their security sentinels undergo intensive trainings on security operations.
"These measures are added costs to our aspirations to achieve economic growth and well-secured and safe environment; we have no choice but to do it," he ended.
