A challenge to the IATF

If there is anything very wrong with some of the ideas emanating from the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) especially now that they made that major shift from Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) to the current General Community Quarantine (GCQ) is that, rather than make things easier for our people to resume their work, they have literally thrown into everyone’s path the crazy government bureaucracy. Why in heaven’s name are they doing this to the Filipino people? I dare say that IATF should make things easier for our people!

I have a complaint from my son, a Philippine Airlines (PAL) 2nd officer who was in his home in Cordova during our three-month lockdown. Now that PAL asked them to return to work, which he did last Tuesday, he flew to Manila and his job was to fly PAL’s 777-300 ER to Los Angeles, then to Barbados to fetch stranded OFWs there, then flew to Vancouver then to Clark Airbase in what PAL calls an historic flight, after all PAL doesn’t fly that route. Now my son’s problem is that he is not allowed to return home to Cordova, Mactan because he is considered Manila-based. But we have no house in Manila. Now the Pasay City Health Office wants to swab him, even if PAL already swabbed him… and the Barangay wants him to apply a permit simply because he stays in Pasay with a friend.  So will someone from the IATF give him a certificate that shows he lives in Cordova, Mactan?

In another issue, for GCQ areas, the IATF has issued a return to work notice, which is much welcomed by our people who have lost their jobs for the last three months. However, the IATF never considered that the majority of these workers need public transportation… and unfortunately there is none available. But as you very well know Filipinos are a resilient lot. Many of them have their own family motorcycles. Then comes the ruling that no back ridings allowed even with wives as there is no social distancing in back riding. 

Perhaps it is high time for the IATF to understand that husband and wife do not need social distancing. I don’t even wear masks in my home including my wife, so why in heaven’s name can’t my wife back ride in our motorcycle? Doing so would never infect us as we go our way. So we would like to know what kind of logic do the people in IATF have? It is high time for Pres. Rodrigo Duterte to realize and totally understand that if GCQ means that he wants the Philippine economy to return, then he must make concessions for the workers like allowing them to back ride in their husband’s motorcycles as this doesn’t really mean that they are spreading the coronavirus. 

I have been talking on the phone with many friends who have small businesses and basically their complaints are the same one that I’m writing today. So I dare challenge the IATF to make it easier for workers to return to work and help restart our economy because the nation needs to put our economy back in order. More importantly please don’t slap the government’s bureaucracy on our tired workers!

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Last Friday, eight protesters were arrested during a rally at the University of the Philippines (UP-Lahug) in Cebu City against the controversial Anti-Terrorism Bill. However the Police Regional Office (PRO)-7 was quick to say that the arrest was not stifling the protesters’ freedom of expression but that the rallyists were arrested because they violated the rule against mass gatherings during the General Community Quarantine (GCQ) and because they did not have a permit to rally.

PRO-7 Director Albert Ignatius Ferro told the media, “They are basically endangering the people of Cebu because we are in a pandemic situation… we are not against the expression of mass protest if only on normal situation.” That may be a proper excuse for stopping the protest rally of the UP students. But in truth, for many decades now it is only the students from UP who openly declare their support for the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA) and the National Democratic Front (NDF).

What is abhorrent is that too many parents do not realize that their children end up joining first with the NDF and eventually end up as NPA recruits and often get themselves killed in their area of operation. This is why I checked with the social media and a good majority supports the Anti-Terror Law, which most Cebuano lawmakers also support. Now ask yourselves who are the folks who are really afraid of the Anti-Terror Law? For almost 50 years, many Filipino people have been killed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) or NPA, including those within the NPA who end up in a pogrom like what happened in Inopacan, Leyte. This is why we need this bill! So what are you afraid of in the Anti-Terror Bill?

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