WHILE business leaders understand the need to restrict mobility in pandemic, they stressed that the new Alert Level System (ALS) for community quarantine—which can be confusing—should be implemented consistently, in addition to rolling out proactive measures.
George T. Barcelon, Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council private sector representative, said the new guidelines may bring a bit of confusion both to the public and business sector.
This, as the ALS vests the local government units (LGUs) with authority to impose granular lockdowns upon determination.
“The guidelines are not really clear-cut,” he told the BusinessMirror. “All of these things depend on the interpretation.”
Barcelon suggested that the government create a digital dashboard like Google Maps and Waze whereby the public can access information about the lockdown measures imposed on certain areas.
He said this can help the business sector adjust their supply chain, along with their operations and deliveries.
“We further hope that the guidelines will be fairly and uniformly implemented by all LGUs and not too costly to monitor,” Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry Acting President Edgardo Lacson told the BusinessMirror.
Lacson underscored the importance of a “well-balanced” guidelines, which both considers the health of the public and economy.
Metro Manila is subject to Alert 4 by September 16. The ALS is broken down to 5 levels, Alert 5 being the most alarming and restrictive.
“You can’t blame business for being impatient but it’s probably prudent to start at Level 4,” Makati Business Club Executive Director Francisco Alcuaz Jr. told this newspaper.
“We hope that can be brought down gradually as we all, especially the mayors, learn to manage saving jobs with saving lives.”
With this, Alcuaz also called on the national and local government to improve hospital, isolation and quarantine systems to better manage the surge in Covid-19 cases.
Proactive measures
Meanwhile, Barcelon sees no problem with imposing lockdowns in areas with high Covid-19 infection rate, but noted that cases still went up during the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
“The reality is we have to live with Covid-19 spreading,” he said, noting that the economy should reopen safely.
To allow safe mobility, Barcelon said that Covid-19 testing should be intensified at the “grassroots” level. “We have to provide for free the saliva test and antigen test and teach them how to use at the barangay level, even for companies,” he explained.
Barcelon, who is also chairman of the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc., said commuters should be tested at least once a week before going out of the vicinity.
“Despite allocating substantial funding for contract tracing, nothing really happened. They spent so much money,” he said. “Why not use that money really to go to the grassroots.”
Rizalina Mantaring, Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) national issues committee chairperson, welcomed the further mobility for the vaccinated. She hopes “this can be expanded further in the future to allow a full and safe
reopening of the economy.”
But Mantaring said granular lockdowns will only work if they are reinforced with timely contact testing and tracing.
Meanwhile, she stressed the need for the government to address the resumption of face-to-face classes.
“This is an urgent issue as online learning has been shown to be not as effective all over the world. Impaired learning capability will impact our youth and consequently our country’s competitiveness well into the future,” Mantaring added.
‘Unfair’ to LGUs—Binay
In a recent statement, former vice president Jejomar C. Binay said the national government is “being unfair to the local governments of Metro Manila” with the implementation of granular lockdowns.
“The national government is not only passing the burden of containing the spread of the virus and providing ayuda [aid] to their constituents to the LGUs,” he stressed. “By making the LGUs take the lead, the national government can now wash its hands of any blame for possible lapses or missteps.”
Binay said it is also “counter-intuitive” to implement the granular lockdown as it is usually adopted when cases are low. “But we are experiencing a surge, and experts say the proper strategy is to contain the virus, which means restricting movements for a certain period…. It defies common sense,” he added.