Manila  - A "cultural propensity" for owning guns has hampered efforts to rid the Philippines of more than 1 million illegal firearms that have aggravated criminality in the country, the national police chief said Tuesday.

Director General Jesus Verzosa said the government has launched a nationwide programme to account for an estimated 1.11 million unlicensed guns in the Philippines, to lobby for tougher gun laws and to educate the public on the need to register firearms.

Verzosa said more than half of the illegal firearms are believed to be owned by the general population, while at least 15,000 are with communist and Muslim rebels and almost 6,000 are owned by criminal groups.

He admitted that implementing the national firearms control programme in the Philippines was not easy because "there is a cultural propensity to own or possess illegal firearms."

"This (national programme) should be a continuing activity to change the mental psyche of our people especially those in areas where it has become a status symbol to possess firearms," he told a forum with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

Verzosa said the national police have proposed tougher laws on gun possession and firearms manufacturing to Congress to help control the proliferation of illegal firearms, which "is one of the main obstacles in the anti-criminality drive."

"We have to have stiffer penalties," he said. "As of now, even if you are caught with a truckload of firearms, you can still post bail."

Verzosa said the police were stepping up efforts to control illegal firearms ahead of national elections in 2010 in a bid to avoid the traditional outbreak of violence among warring political groups especially in the provinces.

"We have to control the movements of firearms ahead of the May 2010 elections. We have to identify those are are authorized to carry firearms," he said. "We have actually proposed a total gun ban for the elections."

In the Philippines' last elections in 2007, more than 140 people were killed in poll-related violence, most of which were incidents that involved illegal firearms owned by private armies of local politicians and clans. (dpa)