Minor Field Trip

Field Trip Overview:

            We the 3^rd batch of the field trip and seminars enrollees are required to hold a minor field trip as compliance for our Field Trip and Seminars subject, after much deliberation and suggestions of places that we can have a technical visit within Davao City we were able to unanimously decide to have it in the Public Safety and Command Center (PSCC).

            On the set date August 25,2012, I arrived before 9:00 a.m. at the scheduled meeting place in the waiting shed area outside the PSCC building. A lot of us were excited and we immediately noticed that the security is tight. We are required to wear our school I.D. at all times and never stray out of the group. Before entering PSCC we were greeted by the city’s public safety officer Mr. Magno G. Adalin and instructed us to divide ourselves in two groups, since we are a big group of 67 students. I was assigned in group 1 and we were immediately ushered to the conference room inside the PSCC building and we are informed that is also the same room where different agencies and the city Mayor herself meets up for planning purposes. After everyone was in the room, Mr. Magno then proceeded to generously discuss to us about PSCC.

            From his discussion I learned that PSCC aims to be the nerve center that unifies and further coordinates different government agencies like the Davao City Police Office (DCPO), the City Health Office and City Social Services and Development Office, the Central 911, the Bureau of Fire Protection, the Red Cross, the Davao City Disaster Coordinating Council, Office of the Civil Defense and the Regional Disasters Coordinating Council. Along with this different coordinated government agencies, PSCC is also given the opportunity to automate itself and install advance technologies that will definitely help them in achieving the provision of Vice Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte which is that "every local government unit exercises the powers necessary and proper for the governance such as the promotion of health and safety, enhancement of prosperity, improvement of morals, the maintenance of peace and order, and the preservation of comfort and convenience of the inhabitants within their respective jurisdictions." After the open forum where we students were encouraged to ask questions, Mr. Magno showed to us an audio visual presentation of the current Mayor Sarah Duterte which speaks to us more about Davao City’s life with the PSCC presence.

Finishing our discussion in the conference room, it is now our turn to have a technical tour around the PSCC building. 

An officer of the PSCC became our next speaker and ushered us into this mini lobby which is just next to what we may call the main center of PSCC and is just separated by a glass wall enabling us to view everything that is happening inside. The speaker then proceeded to explaining to us the different technologies they make use in ensuring public safety, like for example in the roads, they have installed high-tech CCTV cameras rotatable 360 degrees with 35x zooming power. These CCTVs were installed in the busiest streets of Davao City for the purpose of maintaining unclogged traffic, crime control and fast emergency response in terms of disaster in the road. The feeds from the different CCTVs are fed to the system of PSCC through wireless connectivity which in turn the employees inside the CCTV can control the movements of the camera. The speaker also added that the system being used by PSCC is also equipped with Weather Monitoring and Flood Alert System which helps in monitoring of the different bodies of water surrounding Davao City and provide an early warning for possible catastrophic events that may arise in times of severe bad weather.

Before we left the speaker showed us some clips taken by their camera around the city, there was this one clip that shows a traffic violator who was trying to talk the traffic enforcer into bribery, the traffic enforcer responded by pointing to the CCTV clearly stating that “it is not only I watching you…” Some other clips showed different accidents on the road which was responded fast by the emergency response team after being tapped by the PSCC.

The day ended great for us, we learned many new things, PSCC being created with the use of the peoples’ tax is immense yet the service being presented by PSCC is value beyond any money that could worth and I am also sure that all of us are proud to live in Davao City which is safe, protected and secured under the watchful eyes of the PSCC.