BUGUIAS, Benguet– Local chief executives of the four towns in northern Benguet agreed to suspend the operation of their common triage in Barangay Natubleng here to allow frontliners to concentrate their efforts in securing their respective borders as part of the stringent measures to prevent the possible spread of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in their areas of jurisdiction.
Mankayan Mayor Frenzel A. Ayong said the decision to suspend the common triage of Mankayan, Buguias, Kibungan and Bakun is to avoid exhausting the meager resources of the municipalities and for practical reasons that will be beneficial to all the concerned parties.
He added that the agreement by the concerned mayors was for their respective frontliners to concentrate their border control measures along their boundaries to prevent the unnecessary movement of people to control the spread of the deadly virus in their respective areas of jurisdiction.
“Our frontliners had a wonderful time in working with their counterparts in maintaining our common triage for quite some time but we decided that it is more practical and cost saving to just maintain our borders,” Mayor Ayong stressed.
According to him, each of the municipalities are spending more or less P10,000 weekly for their assigned frontliners to work in the common triage 2 days a week and according to the computation of their finance officers, the maintenance and operation of their common triage is costly and it will be better for them to just concentrate in maintaining the controls at their borders as part of their overall efforts to protect their towns from the spread of the virus.
Mayor Ayong stated the suspension of the operation of their common triage is also part of the gradual easing up by the municipal governments on the movement of motorists along national roads but with restrictions once people enter their respective areas of jurisdiction.
The four northern towns in Benguet are among the municipalities that registered the lowest number of COVID cases since the start of the implementation of the prevailing community quarantine last March.
Ayong stated northern Benguet still remains closed for tourism-related activities because of the restrictions imposed on the movement of people following the discovery of intermittent cases that are recorded from time to time because of the essential travels of the people which local governments are trying to aggressively regulate because local officials do not want their health care system from being overwhelmed.
He called on people wanting to move around for their daily needs to understand the implementation of the stringent restrictions because the local governments want to protect the health and safety of their constituents by not exposing them to the elements that may cause them to contract the deadly virus and eventually transmit this to others. By Hent