Mayor wants to ban full-faced helmets | Sun.Star
Mayor wants to ban full-faced helmets
CEBU City Mayor Michael Rama is revisiting the idea of banning full-face helmets.
In a press conference, Rama announced that he will ask the City Legal Office and the Cebu City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) to jointly study this possibility.
This way, a legislation can be brought to the Council in order to regulate and introduce some refinements on the requirement of wearing of helmets, said Rama.
While helmet regulations have been an issue for officials for a couple of years now, Rama said what triggered his move was the recent killing of a 40-year-old woman at the Taboan Public Market, Barangay San Nicolas.
Motorcycle-riding men shot to death Alma Eugenio last Aug. 5.
It was not clear, though, whether the assailants were wearing full-face helmets.
But most of the crimes perpetrated by motorcycle-riding men, witnesses have a hard time identifying them because they either wear full-face helmets or masks.
Rama also said because of these precedents, the public is wary upon seeing men driving motorcycles with faces covered by helmets.
In 2009, local government units in Cebu discussed the possibility of banning the wearing of full-face helmets; but it was Talisay City that succeeded in passing an ordinance to this effect as a means to prevent crime last year.
The Mandaue City Council passed a similar ordinance in 2009 but Mayor Jonas Cortes vetoed it.
Lapu-Lapu City also mulled the passing of such ordinance around the same time in 2009.
In the same year, Cebu City, through then councilor Arsenio Pacaņa, asked the Land Transportation Office and the Department of Transportation and Communication to review the policy on the use of helmets because of the propensity of criminals to use them to hide their identities.
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on August 21, 2011.