Duterte vows arrestof parents neglecting kids

Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte will hold parents more responsible for their children as he vowed to arrest and detain those who neglect helpless and defenseless young ones from now on.

He said arresting parents and charging them in court is a lesson for everyone to be responsible not only providing their food when they are at work but ensure they are taken cared of.

As this developed, Duterte will hold a command conference with police and barangay officials to set his policy on rescuing children found on streets especially at night. He said he will look for another house with three social workers to render night duty.

“This has nothing to do with provisions of lawful arrest but giving children protection,” the mayor stressed.

Wednesday night last week, Duterte ordered the arrest of the parents of three children ages six (6), seven (7) and (8) he saw sleeping under a parked vehicle along Obrero Street.

The mayor recalled that he was already on his way home that night when he saw some people with flashlights looking under the vehicle. Curious, he got off from his car and checked whether there was trouble and he saw the three children sleeping prompting him to call the police to bring the children to a halfway house for minors and to locate the parents.

When the police located the parents, they told the mayor the parents were just sleeping in their house.

This means they did not search for them. They just neglected them, Duterte said in Bisaya during his Sunday program Gikan sa Masa Para sa Masa.

According to Duterte, two of the kids were children of the husband from a previous relationship and one from his wife’s as a single parent.

I have them arrested for abandonment of the minors. There’s a provision of the law that punishes in the conduct of a person with regards to their children. A case must be filed against them and have them jailed.

“I would like to teach them a lesson,” Duterte vowed.

Duterte said he will only agree to drop the case against the parents if they surrender their children to the government which will now take care of them because “apparently they (parents) are incapable really of rearing and watching over the children because they are always out.

The parents claimed the older siblings would take care of the younger ones, but Duterte said the children were actually evicted from their house. They were neglected outright and the children were not even sent to school, Duterte added. (PNA)