LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The municipal government recently reminded representatives of concerned government agencies and local government units (LGUs) transacting business with the various offices in the municipality to observe the proper protocols and for them to be polite in dealing with their counterparts in the municipality.
Mayor Romeo K. Salda stated that it just came to his attention that there were some personnel of a law enforcement agency outside the municipality who allegedly visited the local government’s operations center and arrogantly demanded for the contact tracing records of the 22-year-old male that tested positive for the new Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) variant.
He added that those who arrogantly visited the operations center did not even formally introduce themselves to the assigned personnel and seems like they did not even give due respect to the fact that they were in the jurisdiction of the municipal government and outside their jurisdiction which caused an uproar among local frontliners.
Mayor Salda claimed that he was not even properly informed that there will be people outside the jurisdiction of the municipality who will be visiting the operations center to ask about the contact tracing details of the first case of the new variant in the locality by the superior of the said individuals that he was surprised over their actuations as reported by the people who were then manning the daily activities of the operations center.
“If there are people who are demanding that we will respect their authority, then they should also return the compliment by respecting our authority over the municipality and informing us on their desired activities in the locality and not for them to simply barge in our operation center and demand for whatever details they want to know about our first case of the new variant,” Salda stressed.
According to him, it is unfair for public officials to publicly making pronouncements that officials of the Baguio-La Trinidad-Itogon-Sablan-Tuba-Tublay (BLISTT) area are not cooperative to the mass testing and contacting tracing efforts of the government because they always agreed to the implementation of stricter border protocols even if the same were being dictated upon by a few people just to ensure that there will be order in the area but it seems they are not satisfied on the way we respect and adhere to their ounce-sided decisions.
The mayor asserted that the matter was only brought to his attention recently when the aforesaid incident after the discovery of the first case of the new variant in the municipality then he would have already called the attention of the concerned officials and the personnel who arrogantly visited the local government’s existing operations center.
Salda emphasized that if the aforesaid personnel only respect the one that ordered them to get details of the first case of the new variant in the locality, then they do not have the moral ascendancy to be commanding the personnel assigned in the operations center to produce the contact tracing details of the said case because local contact tracers were able to complete the required details that had been transmitted to the health department for further assessment and evaluation and to provide the guidance for the conduct of future contact tracing of close contacts that had been left out. By HENT
