Police forces have started securing the 36,679 designated voting centers across the country in preparation for the May 10 elections.

Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina, PNP spokesman, said the arrival of troops in their respective assignments will also mark the activation of the Security Assistance Desk which will be set up in each of the 36,679 voting centers nationwide.

At least two policemen are expected to man the Security Assistance Desk but Espina said additional policemen may be infused depending on the security situation in each area.

At least two soldiers will also serve as augmentation for each of the voting centers.

“The deployment has already started as early as Sunday. Yesterday, Police Regional Office 11 (Southern Mindanao) is conducting simultaneous deployment in its area of responsibility,” said Espina in an interview.

Espina said the security assistance desk will serve as the home of policemen starting the day they arrived until all the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines and other election materials are retrieved from the voting centers.

“That means that our personnel will have to stay there for a minimum of one week… we have to deploy them early to ensure that the voting centers are all secured come election day,” said Espina.

All the expenses that will be used in the deployment, including the allowances of the policemen, will come from the P400 million fund released by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to the PNP.

Espina said they expect to put up 36,679 security assistance desk across the country, which is also the total number of voting centers based on the information from the Comelec.

Of the figure, the Comelec data revealed that there will be 16,583 voting centers in Luzon, including the 7,555 voting centers in Metro Manila; 10,213 in the Visayas; and 9,983 in Mindanao.

Espina said the clustering of polling precincts has helped a lot in securing the voting centers, explaining that it would have been a security nightmare for them if they were tasked to guard each polling precincts. There is an average of 10 polling precincts in each of the voting centers.

“Securing these voting centers was made easier for us because the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) will also help us in manning the security assistance desks,” said Espina.

Police forces in Luzon and the Visayas are currently under heightened alert status while police units in Mindanao have been under full alert status since January 10.

“We expect to finish the deployment of policemen who will man the security assistance desk by May 5 (Wednesday), the day we are going to raise full alert status nationwide,” said Espina.

The military, it was recalled, has already hoisted red alert status to all its troops nationwide on Friday.