THE City Council of Cagayan de Oro is mulling to allocate more budget for the thousands of “barangay tanods” (village watchmen) employed in the city's 80 barangays.
In his special report, Councilor Alam Lim said the tanods, after undergoing basic skills training, deserves to receive more benefits from the city, aside from their monthly honorarium worth P500.
Lim said he hopes the council will continue to support the "ronda tanods" by allowing funds for their benefits, such as insurance, honorarium, free medical assistance and hospitalization at the JR Borja General Hospital.
Councilor Teodulfo Lao Jr. for his part said this year, the city has allocated a total of P15 million for the honorarium of the barangay tanods.
"Each barangay has 20 tanods, and our existing ordinance which I authored of, provides P500 honorarium for them every month. But now P500 is just only a centavo maybe," Lao said.
Lao said it is only right to give them more than the P500 since police are using them as force multipliers.
"They are in the front line if there is a calamity that happens in the barangays, they also assist our traffic enforcers in managing the flow of traffic. So perhaps in the next budget hearing, I would propose to the finance and appropriations that there should be an increase," he said.
The City Government has earlier initiated a three-day basic orientation training to equip the tanods with the necessary skill, which includes: basics on patrol operation, citizen’s arrest and arresting technique, traffic operation, intelligence gathering, crime scene protection and preservation, gender sensitivity, among others.