MANKAYAN, Benguet– The municipal government recently tightened the restriction on the movement of people inside and outside the municipality to sustain the efforts to abate the spread of the dreaded Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the municipality that could ruin the gains of the municipality during the implementation of the community quarantine.
Mayor Frenzel A. Ayong said it has been observed that with modified general community quarantine (MGCQ), residents are reportedly eager to go out of their homes for activities that will help them recover from the serious negative effect of the global pandemic.
He added the issuance of travel passes have to be scrutinized so that only essential and emergency travels will be allowed although there are also travels outside the municipality that are authorized on a case to case basis.
However, Mayor Ayong disclosed that individuals who travel to identified red areas are mandated to go on the prescribed 14-day quarantine upon arrival in the municipality to ensure that they will be free from the deadly virus when interacting with the members of their families, relatives and people in their community.
“We call on our constituents for their utmost understanding when we adopted stricter regulations in the issuance of travel passes because we want to make sure that only essential and emergency travels outside the municipality will be authorized. We want to ensure that the health and safety of our constituents is protected and for them not to contract the deadly virus when travelling outside the locality that is why we put in place stricter rules,” Mayor Ayong stressed.
According to him, the virus is just in the mist of the communities inside and outside the municipality and what is being avoided is for people to contract the illness and eventually spread the same in their villages, thus local officials want stricter regulations on the movement of people outside the town primarily for health and safety reasons.
He commended the residents for their utmost cooperation in the initial stages of the community quarantine and appealed to them to give the same support to the stricter guidelines that had been adopted because of the eminent threat of the virus to the health and safety of the people in the different barangays.
Mankayan is one of the municipalities in the province with the least number of COVID-19 cases amidst the continuous increase in the discovered positive cases in other urban centers in the Cordillera like Baguio City, Tabuk City and La Trinidad, the province’s capital town over the past several months.
He urged the people to bear with the inconveniences of the prevailing community quarantine because it is the only way by which to combat the possible spread of the virus in the locality. By Hent