Manila Mayor Honey Lacuna is leaning toward the training of all barangay tanods in the city after seeing the success of the four-day seminar held in the Tondo district.

The training was the brainchild of Raxabago police chief P/Lt. Col. Rosalino Ibay Jr. which drew support from Manila First District Rep. Dionix Dionisio.

“The program is good and it should be adopted in all barangays in Manila so they (tanods) would have the skills and knowledge on how to help the police enforce the law,” Lacuna said in Filipino.

The mayor told Daily Tribune that she was pleasantly surprised by the turnout of the participants in the training that covered police, firefighting, rescue, and basic self-defense training

Manila Vice Mayor Yul Servo, meanwhile, spent his 47th birthday holding medical, dental and feeding missions Saturday with residents of the Boystown village in Marikina City.

In all, 947 homeless kids and senior citizens benefitted from the program, Servo said. He told Tribune that both the young and old residents of the facility should feel the community’s concern for them.
For the young, so they can become productive and responsible citizens when they are made to join mainstream society, Servo said.

A two-day “Tanod Olympics” capped, on the other hand, the village guards’ training at the Patricia Sports Complex.

Dionisio said he backed the training since it would help realize his crusade to erase the stigma associated with Tondo that it is a hotbed of criminality.

“That had been my campaign promise to my constituents — that we want to do without the reputation of Tondo as where toughies rule,” Dionisio said.