DAGUPAN CITY — The province of Pangasinan continues to be insurgency-free but sometimes, members of the communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) encroach on the border areas of the province in the east and west.
This was disclosed by Senior Supt. Ronald Oliver Lee, Pangasinan police provincial director, when asked on what they are doing over the stepped up terrorism activities of the NPA in some parts of country.
He said the encroachment by the rebels in the border areas in Pangasinan comes when the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) operates in the other side of the boarder either in the east or west.
But there is no cause for alarm because these rebels remained in the mountain areas in the borders and are not going down to the lowlands, he added.
Lee was interviewed by newsmen when he presented firearms and illegal drugs confiscated by policemen and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) during a “One-Time, Big Time” operation in Dagupan early Wednesday.
As to the preparations, he said they had strengthened various police stations especially in towns located in the borders and conducted what he called target hardening which called the putting up of barangay intelligence network.
This is aside from the fact that the AFP had beefed up their forces in the mountain areas in the eastern and western boundaries of the province. Leonardo Micua/PNA-northboundasia.com