The new chief of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) will not recommend a whole day total signal shutdown during the Sinulog 2020 festivities.

Col. Engelbert Soriano, acting director of the CCPO, assured local and foreign tourists as well as residents in this city that there will only be “shutoff” of signal from the three big telecommunication networks on specific hours on the day of Sinulog on January 19.

“I want to assure the visitors… that we will establish communicators from the multiagency coordinating centers who will maintain direct communication lines,” Soriano said in Filipino during a radio interview.

He assured the public that the security coverage will not be compromised with the shutdown.

The chief of the city police here considered the festival every January as the biggest not only in Central Visayas but in the entire country.

“Sabi ko po lagi, may kanya-kanya sana tayong papel and we support sana (I said it many times, we have different roles in the celebration and we should support) 100 percent our respective roles,” he said.

He said he is taking the Sinulog tasks as his “great challenge” in 2020.

While the police are busy preparing to secure the Sinulog celebration, he said he expects other local government units in Cebu to cooperate “in terms of reporting suspicious personalities, suspicious activities.”

He also urged the public to report to authorities anything that will arouse their suspicions that need immediate action from law enforcement and intelligence units.

Despite the busy preparation for the upcoming festivity in Cebu in honor of Sto. Niño, Soriano said the police in the city will not cease its intensified campaign against illegal drugs, as ordered by Police Regional Office-7 regional director, Brig. Gen. Valeriano de Leon. (PNA)