BONTOC, Mountain Province – The provincial inter-agency task force for the management of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases agreed to delineate the function of bringing back to their respective municipalities locally stranded individuals (LSIs) and returning Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) during this period of the community quarantine between the municipal and provincial governments.
Gov. Bonifacio C. Lacwasan, Jr. disclosed that municipal governments will take charge of the requirements in bringing back LSIs to their respective municipalities while the provincial government will take charge of the requirements in bringing home returning OFWs from either the National Capital Region (NCR) or Central Luzon depending on where these individuals completed their prescribed 14-day quarantine.
“We agreed on how we can bring home the thousands of LSIs from the various regions of the country and the hundreds of returning OFWs along the lines of shared responsibility in attending to the needs of our constituents who were stranded in other parts of the country primarily because of the implementation of the Luzonwide lockdown,” Gov. Lacwasan stressed.
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The governor claimed it is the vehicles of the municipal governments that will fetch their respective LSIs in identified drop off points while it will be the vehicles of the provincial government that will fetch returning OFWs from their identified quarantine areas in Metro Manila, Bulacan or Pampanga.
However, he explained that the situation of returning OFWs is more difficult to handle because they have to undergo triaging at the Baguio Teachers Camp in Baguio City to ascertain their health condition after undergoing the prescribed 14-day quarantine before being released to the recipient provincial governments.
According to him, even if there are specific tasks identified for the provincial and municipal governments, there should be continuous coordination among the concerned government agencies and the provincial and municipal governments, as well as the office of Rep. Maximo Dalog, Jr., to avoid the incidents that may compromise the province’s health care system and cause panic among villagers if there will be confirmed Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases because of the influx of LSIs and returning OFWs.
Lacwasan underscored that both the provincial and municipal governments are sustaining the strict implementation of community quarantine protocols and guidelines to protect the health and safety of the people from the spread of the virus as its threat remains amidst the enforcement of the Luzonwide lockdown.
He appealed to the people of the province to continue abiding by the established health and safety protocols as these are proven means by which the spread of the deadly virus could be prevented and that the possible community transmission of the same could be averted in their own level to avoid the health care system from being overwhelmed.
By Hent
Photo by Armando M. Bolislis
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