PNP suspends BMI requirement in promoting police officers

Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Police General Guillermo Eleazar on Tuesday approved a recommendation temporarily suspending the body mass index (BMI) requirement for the promotion of PNP personnel.

In a statement, Eleazar said he approved the recommendation to suspend PNP Memorandum Circular 2020-029 in consideration of cops amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In approving this, we took into consideration the balance between the workload of all our personnel in this time of pandemic and the need for them to comply with this Memorandum Circular just to be promoted,” he said.

“Nasa panahon tayo ng pandemya kung saan nangangailangan ng malasakit at pang-unawa sa aming mga tauhan, lalo na ang libu-libo naming personnel na naatasang magpatupad ng minimum public health safety protocol 24 oras,” he added.

[We’re in the middle of the pandemic where we need care and understanding for our personnel, especially since thousands of our personnel are tasked to enforce the minimum public health safety protocols for 24 hours.]

Eleazar, however, reminded that this is only temporary and that the BMI requirement will be reimplemented once the situation returns to normal.

Under PNP Memorandum Circular 2020-029, the BMI is defined as a key index of a person’s weight adjusted for height measured by weight in kilograms over height in meters squared.

According to the memorandum, the minimum BMI required for cops is 18.5 while the maximum is 27.0, varying on the age of the PNP personnel.

Meanwhile, those with 18.4 and below are classified as underweight, those with 25.0 to 29.9 are classified as overweight, and those with a BMI range of 30.0 to 34.9 are classified as obese. —NB, GMA News