THERE are 102 police personnel in full battle gear from the Regional Mobile Force Battalion that arrived in Pangasinan on April 14 to beef up forces manning the 20 border control points into Pangasinan.

P/Major Arturo Melchor Jr., information officer of the Pangasinan Police Provincial Office (PPO), said the deployment was ordered by P/ Brig. General Emmanuel Peralta to augment the existing police personnel currently manning the 20 border control points in Pangasinan.

The regional police responded to reports that despite the tight watch by the police in various control points, many people from outside the region, particularly Metro Manila anits environs, who may be carriers of the COVID-19 virus, still managed to enter the province.

Pangasinan is the gateway to the Ilocos Region and the Cordilleras.

In Dagupan City, the Public Order and Safety Office (POSO) reported that it intercepted in Barangay Tebeng in the morning of April 14 what it called a colorum van which it accosted of illegally transporting paying passengers from Dau in Mabalacat, Pampanga to Dagupan City.

The fact that the van was able to get through the border control point possibly in Bayambang or Carmen, Rosales is proof the policemen watching the borders were lax.

There were also reports received by the PUNCH during the Holy Week that travelers from Metro Manila disembarked at the TPLEX exit in Urdaneta City where vans parked from a distance waited for them in violation to the travel ban imposed by an executive order of Gov. Amado Espino III when NCR+ was still under Enhanced Community Quarantine.

When NCR+ was downgraded to Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ), travel to Pangasinan from the south and vice versa eased a bit. (Leonardo Miua)

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