MORE than 500 cases of violence against women (VAW) in Panabo City last year were recorded by the city’s Social Welfare and Development Office (SWDO) in 2014.
The total of 550 cases during the year means that at least one woman is battered in the city daily.
But local social welfare officials said the figure was not alarming but rather a positive indicator that the women in the city are being empowered after years of implementation of Republic Act 9262, or the Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act of 2004.
The officer in charge of the Panabo City SWDO, Jeannette Lamoste, said the higher number of VAW cases as compared to five years ago indicated that “the women are going out of the closet” and have started reporting the outrage committed on their person.
She said that last year’s VAW statistics are mostly cases on physical and emotional violence inflicted mostly by the legal or common-law husbands of the victims.
The cases were reported to SWDO, the police or referred by the barangays.
To further push the efficacy of the law that protects the women and their children, Lamoste said that this year, the office lined up more VAWC trainings for both women and men and for barangay women desk officers.
Also, some P350,000 was set aside by the Department of Social Welfare and Development under its Grassroots Participatory Budgeting Project for the family-strengthening strategy seminars for the city’s beneficiaries of the 4Ps (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program), she said.