MMDA crackdown on smokers starts today

MANILA, Philippines -  The strict enforcement of the no-smoking law in all 17 metro Manila cities will start today, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) announced yesterday.

In the MMDA’s weekly program over radio dzBB, Loida Labao Alzona, the agency’s chief of health public safety and environment protection, said they will work with the local government units in apprehending smokers caught violating the provisions of Republic Act 9211 or the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003.

Labao-Alzona said persons with lit cigarettes, even if they are not puffing on them, will be fined. “We are after the protection of the non-smokers,” she said.

Surveys indicate 28 percent of Filipinos aged 15 years and older – around 17.3 million people – are smokers.

According to MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino, MMDA enforcers – accompanied by police officers and local health officers – will arrest persons smoking in public areas and public conveyances.

RA 9211 defines public places as “enclosed or confined areas of all hospitals, medical clinics, schools, public transportation terminals and offices, and building such as private and public offices, recreational places, shopping malls, movie houses, hotels, restaurants, and the like.” Tolentino said this term also includes sidewalks of major and secondary roads in the metropolis.

While public conveyances are defined as modes of transportation servicing the general population like – but not limited to – “elevators, airplanes, buses, taxicabs, ships, jeepneys, light rail transits, tricycles, and similar vehicles.”

First time violators will be fined P500. Those who cannot pay the fine will be made to render community service. Second time offenders will be made to pay a P1,000 fine and those arrested for the third and subsequent times will be fined P5,000.

Health advocates have also repeatedly called on the chain-smoking President Aquino to lead the campaign and quit.

Maricar Limpin, executive director of the anti-smoking lobby Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance Philippines, lauded the intensified campaign.

Limpin said the government should go beyond the campaign and prod Congress to pass legislation to raise taxes on tobacco.