CURFEW ROUND UP

This group of youngers are among 55 minors rounded up in Mandaue City for violation of “The Anti-loitering for Minors Ordinance” of Mandaue. They were brought first to Mandaue City Police Office for profiling. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/Police Superintendent Jonathan Cabal, MCPO Chief)

Bobby, 9, was collecting plastic bottles at the Mandaue City public market close to midnight when he was taken by the police.

The boy, who comes from the Badjao community in Barangay Mambaling in Cebu City, was among the 55 minors rounded up on Thursday night as the Mandaue City Police Office (MCPO) starts implementing the city’s 17-year-old but rarely enforced curfew ordinance that prohibits unaccompanied minors to be on the city’s streets from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Supt. Jonathan Cabal, MCPO chief, they decided to implement the city’s curfew ordinance in support of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s earlier pronouncement favoring the strict enforcement of local curfew ordinances on minors as a deterrent to crimes.

“The Anti-loitering for Minors Ordinance of Mandaue,” which prohibits those 18 years and below from “wandering, loitering or sauntering in any public place or in a private road or alley in Mandaue City from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. the following day” was passed on May 25, 1999 but was never properly implemented, Cabal said.

By next week, it is not only in Mandaue City where minors will no longer be allowed to loiter on the streets during ungodly hours. The police in Talisay City will also be doing the same thing.

Cebu City will, however, be more cautious about implementing its own curfew ordinance, passed sometime in the 1990s, because of the thousands of night high school students that might be affected, according to Acting Mayor Margarita “Margot” Osmeña.

In Bobby’s case, the boy and about nine other kids were the only ones left at the Mandaue City Social Welfare and Development Office (MCSWDO) as of 5 p.m. yesterday because social workers had difficulty contacting their parents.

Most of the rounded up children were made to sleep at the second floor of the MCWSWDO office, located about a block away from the MCPO station, until their parents collected them at about 7 a.m.

The MCPO’s move was lauded by both the outgoing and incoming mayors of the city – Jonas Cortes and Luigi Quisumbing, respectively.

Cortes, now the Representative-elect of Cebu’s sixth congressional district, commended the MCPO for rounding up minors, saying that their increasing numbers on the streets has become alarming.

Quisumbing said he was keen on enforcing the curfew ordinance after he formally assumes as mayor on June 30 but he would also want to discuss it first with the police and other concerned agencies. He also wants the minors caught violating the curfew ordinance to be held in a safe holding area.

The Children’s Legal Bureau (CLB) has raised the same issue of having proper holding areas for children caught violating the ordinance.

Minors sniffing solvent while roaming city streets is a common sight in some of Mandaue City’s streets especially at night, particularly along the city’s public market and under the flyover in Barangay Maguikay.

“It’s about time that we (implement) the curfew (on) minors (because there are just too many of them now that are still out on the streets at) unholy hours, ” Cortes said.

While the curfew ordinance imposes a P500 fine or two-day imprisonment on parents or guardians of minors, Cabal said they decided to just warn parents, who are mostly from the marginalized sector, that they would be penalized the next time their children are rounded up by police.

In Talisay City, minors seen loitering at night would also be rounded up starting next week, said Supt. Germano Mallari, chief of the Talisay City Police Office (TCPO).

Mallari said they have yet to decide on the exact date as he would have to coordinate first with the city’s Social Welfare and Development Office, which will take custody of the rounded up minors, on where they would be kept.

He said about ten policemen, along with members of the Barangay Peacekeeping Action Team (BPAT), would patrol the streets, specifically in Barangays Lawaan, Tangke and San Isidro where a lot of minors are seen loitering the streets after 10 p.m.

The city’s curfew ordinance passed in 2002 prohibits minors from loitering or staying outside their houses from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Minors are, however, exempted from the curfew when they are attending academic functions such as commencement exercises and convocations, religious and educational programs, barangay or city fiestas, Holy Week devotions, All Saints and All Souls’ Days, and Christmas and New Year’s Eves celebrations.

Mayor-elect Eduardo Gullas, however, said they would need to review the ordinance as there might be a need to introduce amendments, such as identifying a permanent child-friendly holding area for violators.

Under the city ordinance, a fine of P50 or a four-hour community service under the supervision of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) will be meted on first offenders; and a P100 fine or an equivalent of eight-hour civic service for second offenders.

In Cebu City, Acting Mayor Osmeña said that while she favored enforcing the curfew on minors, she was worried that it would affect some 9,000 nigh high school students who would usually finish their classes from 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.

Cebu City Ordinance Number 1786 prohibits minors “of any gender or sex, below 18, to wander, stray, saunter, loiter or ramble outside their residence within Cebu City between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. when they are not accompanied by any parent or guardian.”

Osmeña added the ordinance, a 1960s measure that was only amended in the 1990s, is not equitable.

“You go to (Barangay) Banilad they have bars there, like new restaurants, or hanging out places… The people who go there belong to a more well (off) class. They have cars, they have drivers, some even have bodyguards. Will they arrest them? That’s my question,” she said.

Osmeña noted that barangay tanods usually patrol the streets on foot and can only arrest those who are also on foot, not those who minors who go around in cars.

“What will happen? Looy man sad ang walay auto (It will be unfair to those without cars). It will be those who don’t have the resources (who will be apprehended because of the curfew),” she said.

Also, she said, the city has no facility or centers that could house the rounded up minors. Senior Supt. Benjamin Santos Jr., chief of the Cebu City Police Office, also stressed the need to revisit or strengthen the implementation of City Ordinance 228, or the curfew for minors which was passed in 1961 and prohibited those 18 and below from staying outside unaccompanied by their parents from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Last June 2, CCPO policemen rounded up at least 42 streetkids and their parents and convinced them to undergo a long-term program to improve their condition.

From the streets in downtown Cebu City, the children and parents were brought to the Parian Drop-in Center and were distributed to different foster homes.

The city police earlier signed a covenant with civic organizations, government agencies and the police to implement “Operation sa Gugma,” a unified program that caters to the need of street children, children at risk and children in conflict with the law.

The program was implemented in cooperation with the Department of Social Welfare and Development, Cebu City Prosecutors’ Office, and different nongovernmental organizations.