National Police chief General Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar has ordered all chiefs of police to assist the national government in its information dissemination campaign aimed at convincing more Filipinos to be vaccinated against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
The Philippine National Police (PNP) has been implementing an operational plan (“Oplan Bandillo”), especially at the police station level. The PNP chief wants to use this as one of the platforms in educating residents in their areas of responsibility (AORs) on the benefits of vaccines and eventually convince them to be vaccinated.
“Oplan Bandillo” is a community awareness and information dissemination program against criminal elements and was eventually used to encourage people to observe the minimum health safety standard protocol since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In implementing the operational plan, local police forces use megaphones and speaker system during their regular beat patrol to communicate with people in the community.
Eleazar issued the order as a recent survey revealed that only 51 percent of Filipinos have expressed confidence on the Covid vaccination program of the government.
“Bilang dating PNP ASCOTF [Administrative Support for Covid-19 Task Force], nakita ko ang kahalagahan ng information dissemination para kumbinsihin ang kapulisan na magpa-bakuna, [As a former PNP ASCOTF member, I saw the importance of information dissemination to convince the police to get vaccinated],” said Eleazar.
When the PNP ASCOTF conducted its own survey among PNP personnel on who wanted to avail of the Covid-19 vaccine in February this year, only 51 percent of the more than 220,000 personnel responded that they wanted to be inoculated.
But using fact sheets and videos from the Department of Health that were uploaded in an app-based program that is accessible to all PNP personnel, Eleazar said they monitored positive development every day.
“Every day, we monitored some of our personnel who initially declined being vaccinated changing their mind, and we attribute this to our aggressive information drive,” he said.
Currently, 84 percent of the PNP population now wanted to avail of the Covid-19 vaccine.
“Ito ang gusto nating i-replicate sa ating mga komunidad para mas lalong dumami ang makumbinsi na magpa-bakuna. Importante ito dahil nakasalalay sa bakuna ang pagbabalik natin sa normal na gaya nang nakita natin sa Israel at sa iba pang bansa, [This is what we want to replicate in our communities so that more people can be convinced to get vaccinated. This is important because our return to normal depends on the vaccine; as we have seen in Israel and other countries,]” Eleazar said.
Aside from “Oplan Bandillo,” that the PNP social media accounts down to the local police stations can be used as a platform for the information campaign aimed at convincing more people to trust the vaccination program.