BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines – The cold, hard figures are not in yet but a police official here has seen a rise in cases involving blades in the first few dsys of the milling season, also known as tiempo suerte in this sugar-producing province of the Philippines.
And the equation, it seems, can be summed up into ABC or alcohol+blades=crime as the return of relatively higher earnings has led to increased alcohol consumption by workers in sugarcane fields whose tools of the trade can be turned into efficient killing weapons.
Camp Montelibano spokesman, Captain Judesses Catalogo, told DNX his office has noted a rise in crimes against persons with the use of bladed weapons over the past weeks as the milling season sets in over this province that is largely dependent on the monocrop industry.
Catalogo’s office receives blotter reports from the province’s 32 localities, most of which are planted to sugarcane, and he said he has noted a rise in hacking and stabbing incidents.
He did not provide statistics yet, however.
Catalogo noted that most of these incidents happen during Fridays and the weekend when canecutters take their days off from work, usually with a lapad or wide bottle of rhum.
Alcohol usually don’t blend well with blades, in most cases an espading, saksak or a lantip that are used assugarcane harvesting tools but can very well cut through human flesh and bone, Catalogo pointed out.
Catalogo added a study he did for his Masteral degree tend to point to the correlation between alcohol consumption and the commission of crime.
