TO ENSURE a hassle-free holiday, the Philippine National Police (PNP) urged Monday residents in Metro Manila and nearby areas to just stay home during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Summit week.
“We advise them to stay home and spare themselves the trouble of being caught in heavy traffic, or adding to the road congestion in the next four days,” PNP spokesperson Wilben Mayor said.
Government work and classes in all levels are suspended from Tuesday to Friday while private employees have no work on Wednesday and Thursday as some roads, particularly in Manila and Pasay City, have been closed to foot and vehicle traffic as part of security measures.
But motorists already felt the effect of road closures on Monday when traffic jams took place in Manila.
Meantime, Mayor clarified that the PNP has not received reports of any direct or specific threat to the Apec Leaders' Summit on November 18-19 following the terror attacks in Paris, France last Friday.
“The nationwide Full Alert condition is a matter of routine operational procedure in response to the incident in France, and further necessitated by ongoing security operations for the Apec Summit,” he said.
Mayor said they have received reports of “scare message," warning of purported terror threats.
“I believe there is a deliberate effort at disinformation. Such messages must be disregarded and reported immediately to authorities,” he said.
PNP chief Ricardo Marquez said they are fielding more police personnel in areas where the Apec meetings are being held as well as in Apec delegates’ areas of engagement where they are expected to go for recreation such as airports and malls in Bonifacio Global City in Taguig, Rockwell in Makati City and Ermita in Manila.
He said they also added physical barriers along the ceremonial routes to assure the smooth flow of traffic for the Apec delegates and to efficiently control the crowd particularly those planning to penetrate the restricted areas.
“Our security preparations are actually scalable, in the sense that when the heads of economy are about to arrive, you will see additional layers of security... You don’t only protect our visitors but essentially you protect our citizens also,” he said.
He said there are also four United States-donated Mercedez Benz Splinter vans that will serve as second line defense mobile detection system for any chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear elements.
“We panel all areas of engagement, route, the billets and venues and part of the paneling is to make sure that there are no radioactive materials present in any venue,” said Marquez.
The PNP chief urged the public to be alert and vigilant of what is happening around them and to immediately report to the authorities any suspicious persons or even unattended baggage. (Sunnex)