The Philippine National Police (PNP) in Negros Oriental requires additional personnel to meet the ideal police-to-population ratio of 1:500.

Lt. Stephen Polinar, spokesperson of the Negros Oriental Provincial Police Office (NOPPO), said yesterday that while this is not possible at the moment, they hope that more police officers will be downloaded to the province.

Polinar said the 310 police personnel from Bacolod City, Negros Occidental were deployed in Dumaguete City for poll duty to augment the current Negros Oriental PNP workforce of 1,410.

He said the augmentation forces had an accounting and debriefing on Wednesday, May 14, before they departed for their original unit.

With the province’s current police strength, the police-to-population ratio is around 1:1,400.

“We are hoping that we can increase that ratio to 1:800 once the Police Regional Office-Negros Island Region [PRO-NIR] is capable of filling the gap,” Polinar said.

The PRO-NIR was recently established, thus it has to rely on PRO-6 in Western Visayas and PRO-7 in Central Visayas for additional police personnel, “but this will be between the regional police directors to decide,” he added.

The population of Negros Oriental as of the 2020 census is estimated at around 1.4 million.

Despite the province’s current police-to-population ratio of 1:1,400, Polinar assured the public that the peace and order situation in Negros Oriental is still “manageable.” (PNA)