Following a citywide smoking ban, Manila Mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada is now pushing for heavier penalties for those violating the anti-smoking ordinance.
On Friday, Estrada said the P500 fine and two-day imprisonment mandated under City Ordinance No. 7748 seemed “no longer enough” to discourage smokers.
“We will increase the fine up to P1,000, or up to P3,000 with imprisonment. There is an imprisonment from one day up to 10 days. Light up or you’ll get lit up,” Estrada warned, as he ordered the City Council to hasten the passage of draft Ordinance No. 7812, imposing a new set of sanctions against smoking ban violators.
“This smoking ban will be imposed in all public health buildings, hospitals, schools, markets, and sidewalks. We will have designated places,” Estrada added.
The day before Valentine’s Day, Estrada announced the city government will enforce a citywide smoking ban based on an old ordinance passed in 2011.
City Ordinance No. 7748 prohibit smoking in all enclosed places like hospitals, schools, public buildings, shopping malls, theaters, warehouses and factories, public utility vehicles and other public conveyances operating in the city.
At city hall, employees can only smoke in three designated areas: Arroceros, Taft Avenue and Freedom Triangle gates.
District 6 Councilor Casimiro Sison, author of draft Ordinance No. 7812, said “it’s about time” a new anti-smoking ordinance with harsher penalties is passed and implemented.
“They are always ignoring this because there are a lot of ordinances regarding the banning of smoking but never been implemented because the penalty is ignored,” Sison pointed out.
Even city hall employees, he said, have been blatantly disregarding the ban on smoking.
“When we reviewed it, we thought of making it stricter. Like in city hall, looking at in the windows, you can see smoke all around them,” Sison said.
Estrada, 79, has kicked the habit after he was briefly hospitalized last December due to asthma attacks. He has since started chewing sugar-free medicated lozenges.
The mayor said it has been his fervent prayer, as the father of the city, that all the 1.7 Manileños remain fit and healthy—the reason why he has been implementing a wide array of health programs and services in the city since he assumed office in 2013.