MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is getting closer to correcting its image of “all coast, no guard” with the plan to hire 900 additional personnel next year.
Rear Admiral William Melad, PCG officer-in-charge, yesterday said that a “massive recruitment will take place in 2016 since the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has included (it) in our budget.”
Presently, there are only 8,807 Coast Guardsmen made up of 7,096 male non-officers; 847 female non-officers; 608 male officers; and 256 female officers. Once they have completed the hiring next year, the number of PCG personnel would climb to 9,707.
However, this would still be far from the ideal target of having 15,000 personnel needed to cover the country, which has the fifth longest coastline in the world. The Philippines, with its 7,107 islands, has 36,289 kilometers of coastline.
Melad wants to give importance to the “specialized training” of their personnel.
PCG spokesman Commander Armand Balilo pointed out that the PCG performs five main functions: maritime safety, maritime security, maritime search and rescue, maritime enforcement and marine environmental protection.
Under the present system, many of the Coast Guard personnel are given training on all five functions.
However, Melad wants to have specialized personnel, who should go through extensive training for a particular function.
This way, Melad envisions a PCG that would have highly technical and highly trained personnel assigned to just one function for a long period of time. The technique would help them hone their knowledge and skills and make them authorities in a particular field.