MANKAYAN, Benguet – The municipal government is eyeing the provision of relief assistance to some eight hundred ninety nine solo parents from the town’s twelve barangays to allow them to cope with the heavy impact of the implementation of the community quarantine to their living condition.
Mayor Frenzel A. Ayong said the beneficiaries of the local government’s relief assistance program is based on the list provided by the different barangays which inventoried the solo parents living in their areas of jurisdiction.
He added the relief assistance will be distributed to the identified beneficiaries once the supplies for the relief packages are in from the concerned offices in charge of procuring the needed items to be given out to the recipients.
Earlier, the municipal government, in close coordination with different government agencies, distributed relief assistance to persons with disabilities, day care workers, barangay health workers, barangay nutrition scholars, senior citizens, among other sectors heavily impacted by the implementation of the community quarantine last March 17, 2020 up to date.
“We will try our best to extend relief assistance we would provide the different heavily impacted sectors of the barangays for them to cope with the effects of the pandemic. We will have to make do with what we could afford and distribute to them as we maximize our existing resources for our anti Corona Virus Disease 2019 operations over the past three and a half months,” Mayor Ayong stressed.
The municipal chief executive pointed out almost all of the sectors had been impacted by the community quarantine thus the local government is trying to ensure its available resources will be given out to those heavily impacted ones to help them recover from the difficult situation that they were placed in.
According to him, the compliance of the residents in the different barangays on the strict implementation of the health and safety protocols over the past several months gained significant results because there was only one COVID case in the municipality recovered from the deadly virus after being confined in a health facility in the province, thus, the need for them to continue adhering to the established quarantine protocols to prevent the emergence of more cases that will surely make life difficult for everyone in the locality.
He claimed that the recent downgrading of Benguet’s status from modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) to GCQ should serve as a reminder to the public that the threat of the deadly virus still exists in the different communities and people must be extra careful in insisting to be out of their residences to avoid the further spread of the virus that will pose a serious threat to their safety in the future.
Ayong reiterated the restrictions of GCQ where mass gatherings, inter-zonal mass public transportation, among others, is not yet be allowed to abate the possible local transmission of the deadly virus to the people which may result in the sudden surge in cases that might stretch the capacity of existing health facilities not only in the municipality but also in other parts of the province in the coming weeks. By Hent