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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Pesquera clarifies: Test ‘Mars’ but don’t collect fees yet
When Councilor Jocelyn Pesquera said the City should test first the Mobile Alarm Response System (Mars), she meant that City Hall should not start collecting fees from subscribers unless Mars is proven effective.
She issued this clarification yesterday after Mayor Tomas Osmeña took exception to a portion of the council budget and finance committee’s report. He asked how the City could test the system if it is not implemented in the first place.
After he was told of Pesquera’s clarification, the mayor stressed City Hall has to implement the system to test its effectivity.
Implementing Mars means having establishments subscribe to the system, which City Councilor Augustus Pe Jr. said will enable City Hall to receive an alarm just three seconds after it is raised.
It works by hooking up subscribers’ mobile phones to a central system at City Hall. Banks are among those considered first-level priority establishments.
Road blocks
This means emergency calls will be sent quickly to the police, which could then set up a dragnet of police forces and road blocks to cut off criminals’ escape routes.
A still fuming Osmeña yesterday said Pesquera is just playing the role of a mayor by suggesting the City should not collect yet from subscribers “even if they want to pay.”
As if she were his boss, he added.
Osmeña said he knows banks do not want to pay anything so that he had “a selling job to do and must find volunteers who want to do it” and subscribe to Mars.
“If banks don’t like to participate, it’s up to them, I’m not forcing them. I’m trying to integrate a modern type of alarm system,” he said of Mars, which already costs the City P2 million.
Helicopter
Pesquera, in a separate interview, said she will not make more remarks because the issue at hand is the security of establishments.
Work on Mars could still continue while the ordinance that set the corresponding fees is not yet approved.
An official of the Cebu Bankers’ Club earlier said subscribing to Mars should not be made compulsory. His bank, for one, already has security arrangements in place.
The mayor assured that only those interested will subscribe to Mars, with a first-level priority costing a monthly fee of P3,600 and second-level ones, P1,000 each.
The last phase of the system involves the purchase of a helicopter that will track fleeing robbers.
Osmeña got the idea from Sao Paulo City, Brazil, which managed to reduce robberies in participating banks by 80 percent because of a better tracking system, using helicopters. (RHM)
(November 12, 2005 issue)
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