A construction worker ticketed for mixing cement without a shirt in Mandaluyong City has become the unlikely face of a national policy correction, prompting the country’s top local government official to commit to a personal visit and an apology.
Department of the Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla said Monday he would go directly to the worker’s home in Barangay Addition Hills to make amends. “I will visit him to personally apologize and I assure him that we will correct this,” Remulla said at a press briefing.
The secretary took direct responsibility for what he described as insufficiently specific guidance on how enforcers were to carry out the Safer Cities Initiative. “It was my fault that I did not give clearer instructions on how to do the Safer Cities Initiative. I will make amends and I will make sure that we will talk about this to clear things up,” he said.
The Mandaluyong incident was formally taken up at a command conference held at Camp Crame in Quezon City on Monday morning, chaired by Remulla alongside Philippine National Police chief Gen. Jose Melencio C. Nartatez, Jr. The fallout from the enforcement controversy also led Manila City to suspend its implementation of the ordinance.
Launched on April 6, the Safer Cities Initiative has resulted in the apprehension of nearly 60,000 individuals across Metro Manila for violations ranging from public drinking and smoking to going shirtless in public spaces. Close to 6,000 of those involved the topless infraction alone. Most were issued warnings rather than formal penalties, but criticism mounted over what detractors called a failure of common sense in enforcement — with the ticketing of a laborer mid-task becoming the sharpest illustration of that critique.
Remulla maintained the program would not be halted. “The Safer Cities Initiative has begun and it will progress. It will progress to other forms of making the city safer which I will announce in the next few weeks as we perfect this,” he said. He added that a clearer reading of the initiative’s impact on crime rates would be possible once April data on focus crimes is compiled.
