The fund will be used for the acquisition of additional police equipment and recruitment of 3,000 personnel this year to make the country’s police force more effective in its overall campaign against lawlessness, terrorism, insurgency, and destabilization.

The Chief Executive announced the setting aside of the R1-billion fund during the 15th PNP anniversary rites last Monday.

Yesterday’s command conference at Camp Crame was attended by the chiefs of the PNP’s Directorial Staff, directors of the PNP Support Group, and regional directors of the 17 police regional offices nationwide.

On the agenda were the distribution of resources, manpower, patrol vehicles/troop carriers, radio equipment, firearms, and other police resources that will be acquired through the R1-billion fund released by Mrs. Arroyo.

Also taken up were the construction of police housing units where a total of R1.6 billion was earlier programmed for medium rise condominium housing facilities in Laguna, Cebu, and Davao. Each condo building is estimated to cost R60 million each.

Lomibao had earlier said that the national police is seriously short of manpower, equipment such as patrol cars, firearms, and radio to make them more responsive and to calls of emergency assistance, peace and order and security maintenance in every neighborhood and community that is threatened by lawlessness, insurgency, and terrorism.

He said the current total of 119,000 officers and men of the PNP is still short of 50,000 to make the force effective and more capable to secure the country’s towns, cities, and barangays nationwide.

As this developed, Lomibao thanked President Arroyo for her consistent support to the PNP anti-crime operations and human resource development program that help boost the morale of the members of the organization in effectively delivering peace and order service to the people.

Lomibao said that the year 2005 was witness to many brave deeds and sterling accomplishments for the PNP and its officers and personnel.

"Our police work has been seen and heard far and wide — from major gains against drug syndicates and kidnap-for-ransom (KFR) groups to a nononsense ‘one strike policy’ against jueteng."

Lomibao said attempts of destabilization were met with unwavering loyalty and commitment to the Constitution and to "our duly constituted authorities."

He said, "our allies here and abroad have been providing technical support for the PNP Integrated Transformation Program (ITP)." (with a report by Yul Malicse)