LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The municipal government has been welcoming returning residents stranded in the different parts of the country since the implementation of the extended Luzonwide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) to fight the dreaded Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) 2019.
However, Mayor Romeo K. Salda said that the stranded students, workers and other individuals should present to local health authorities the required health certificate from their places of origin stating among others that they completed the prescribed 14-day quarantine before being allowed entry in the municipality.
The claimed that for returning stranded residents who can present the required health certificate, barangay health workers will be tasked to inspect their residences to ascertain the availability of spaces they could use to continue their home isolation.
Mayor Salda explained that if there are no spaces in the residences of the returning stranded residents who presented the required health certificates from their places of origin, the local government will allow them to continue their quarantine period in established quarantine facilities in coordination with concerned government agencies.
The city chief executive assured returning stranded residents that the municipal government has available quarantine facilities, provided that they will not be arriving in groups as the available quarantine facilities will surely be not enough.
“We want to make it easy for our returning stranded residents to go back to the municipality and rejoin their families while awaiting the new normal. We should not make it hard for them because it will just complicate the situation,” Mayor Salda stressed.
He expressed his gratitude to several government agencies who extended assistance to some of the returning stranded residents in other country by providing them with transportation, among other needs, for them to rejoin their families in the municipality.
According to him, the municipal government is striving to provide the needed quarantine facilities for the returning stranded residents but it is also important for them to ensure that they are in possession of the appropriate documents to allow them to smoothly enter in the municipality without being confronted with the difficulties of having to procure the same.
Salda appealed to the returning stranded residents to understand and cooperate in the implementation of the stringent policies for them to be allowed entry in the municipality because local authorities are simply cascading to their level the marching orders from the national inter-agency task force on the management of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.
La Trinidad which is the capital town of Benguet is covered by the order of the inter-agency task force for an extended ECQ until May 15, 2020 as the same had been classified as part of the high-risk areas in the country.
By HENT