Local officials appealed GCQ status, DILG says

MANILA, Philippines — Not all local officials were in favor of the extension of general community quarantine, with some appealing the quarantine status of their respective localities, the spokesperson of the interior department disclosed Wednesday. 

This comes after President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday announced that Metro Manila's GCQ would be extended until the end of November, along with those of Batangas province, Iloilo City, Bacolod City, Tacloban City, Iligan City, and Lanao del Sur. 

Metro Manila, the country’s economic center accounting for a third of the nation's GDP, has been under GCQ since the second week of August, and it has been 225 days since the initial enhanced community quarantine was hoisted in mid-March—the longest quarantine in the world.

"There are appeals but I cannot release them until the [Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases] can process them...that is our process," interior undersecretary and spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said in mixed Filipino and English at the Laging Handa press briefing on Wednesday afternoon. He did not offer any other details. 

"We will make the necessary announcements when the [Technical Working Group] has a decision and the IATF has already decided it," he also said. 

Ahead of the chief executive's decision on Tuesday, the DILG also disclosed that Metro Manila's mayors generally wanted the GCQ to stay. 

Last week, Malacañang disclosed that there is an emerging consensus among officials to extend the GCQ in the Metro straight until December in a bid to further resuscitate the country's pandemic-stricken economy.

Retired military general Eduardo Año, secretary of the DILG, has said that Metro Manila's mayors were looking at further easing business and travel restrictions. On Sunday, local governments were also "enjoined" to ease curfew schedules in their localities in a joint advisory signed by the interior, labor, and trade departments. 

Surveys from the Social Weather Stations at the beginning of the month found that adult joblessness had declined to 39.5% percent of the adult labor force.

"The majority wants to make it permanent because they have seen the goodness of the result. It has considerably lowered the number of people infected with the microbe," Duterte said when he made his announcement later that night.

"The way I see it, this is for your benefit too...Look, we are not here to make your life miserable or sad. We are here to make your life comfortable, and to make you happy," he added.

As of the health department's latest case bulletin Tuesday afternoon, the national caseload stands at 373,144.

— Franco Luna

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