BAGUIO CITY March 24 – The city government urged barangay officials in the city’s 128 barangays to emulate the best practices of their fellow barangays in the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) to ensure residents remain in their homes as one of the measures to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in the city.
Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong said barangay officials should learn from the best practices of their counterparts in other barangays on how to control the movement of people during this period of ECQ and come up with systems of implementing such measures.
He said barangay officials must continue taking the lead in the implementation of the stringent rules and regulations to ensure the controlled movement of their constituents as this is crucial in preventing the spread of the deadly virus and save the lives of innocent people.
The city chief executive admitted the city government is still perfecting the system as this is the first time this situation has happened in the country with an unseen enemy.
Under the existing guidelines, barangays are mandated to issue home community quarantine passes to residents who want to go out of their houses to purchase basic needs such as food and medicines where only one member of the household is allowed to go out of their residence in a single time.
Earlier, the Office of the President and the Inter-agency Task Force on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases mandated barangays and local governments to strictly implement the Luzon-wide ECQ to ensure the restricted movement of people and for them to stay in their homes as part of the recommended precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the highly contagious disease.
Previously, the city government and the barangays started issuing travel permits to residents intending to go out of their residences for important personal transactions, except for emergency medical needs, among other granted exemptions.
However, it had been observed that despite the strict implementation of the no permit, no travel policy, many people without important things to do outside their homes found loitering in the different parts of the city that prompted the city government and the barangays to implement a 24-hour curfew pursuant to the national guidelines crafted by the inter-agency task force.
Further, the city government also started to schedule the barangay-assigned market days as part of the overall move of concerned government agencies to impose the needed restrictions in the city’s barangays to further reduce the presence of people outside their homes to stem the threat poised by the deadly virus, especially to the vulnerable sectors like the elderly and other individuals with underlying medical conditions.
City officials underscored that now there is a confirmed COVID-19 case in the city, barangay officials must aggressively and strictly implement the restrictions on the movement of people in their areas of jurisdiction until such time that the ECQ will be lifted by the national government.
By Dexter A. See