DILG sends more troops to Cebu to enforce lockdown

MANILA, Philippines, June 25 ------ More police and military troops would be deployed to Cebu City after it was put on lockdown amid the increase in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said yesterday, as he noted the need to control the movement of people under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in the city.

“The entire Cebu City is on lockdown, so it’s under ECQ, and we will add more police and troops from the Armed Forces of the Philippines so that they can help, because we see that there is really a need for people to be quarantined in their homes, given that there are some 4,000 active cases here and it keeps rising,” Año said in Filipino in an interview with ABS-CBN’s TeleRadyo.

The chief of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said they want to avoid a situation where not only hospital facilities are congested but bodies are also piling up, similar to Metro Manila in early April. He noted that healthcare facilities are likely to be strained, thereby increasing the likelihood of infection among frontline workers, which the government is trying to avoid.

Cebu City was tagged as a “special concern area” due to the rise in COVID-19 cases that prompted President Duterte on Monday night to assign Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, a retired military general, to oversee the response situation in the area and to use all powers of the government’s task force to contain the virus. Aside from Cebu City, Año said he and COVID-19 chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. would also assess the situation in Tacloban City and Leyte province due to the surge in cases there.

Año added that they would also look into allegations that the return of locally stranded individuals (LSIs) and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) led to the spike of COVID-19 cases in those areas. “There was a sudden surge there… so we will also talk to local government officials there and we will look at the situation on the ground and what we can do to help Leyte,” he said.

The DILG secretary said they want stricter regulations on returning LSIs and OFWs to their home provinces, especially those who slip through unnoticed like hitching rides on cargo ships. “While we’re organizing these LSIs who will be brought to the province, there are those who slip through – perhaps one or two of them – who are not subjected to quarantine, that’s why we will be stricter now on LSIs,” he said.

Source: philstar.com