Every worker’s woe

When my friend was diagnosed with COVID-19, I couldn't help but shed tears over her situation. She was a nurse assigned at the critical areas of the hospital which is battling the virus. Among her colleagues, it was her and another nurse who caught the virus. It made her question, “Why her?” And is the job even worth it?

Most of my batch mates took nursing and other medical-related degrees in hopes of working abroad and earn decent income. Health care is one of the highly paid professions abroad. Now that we are in a pandemic, the country has not seen the efforts to keep these workers. Although an effort was made to raise their pay, we were all in the middle of this crisis already and a little bit too late. Many of those working in medical facilities, including my friend, has already contemplated on resigning. The stress and the lack of support has been rendering them low morale for the profession that they have worked so hard for.

With the recent comment of Senator Cynthia Villar for health workers to "just do their jobs," despite the surge in COVID-19 cases, this has made the ordeal much worse. Instead of encouraging them to keep on the fight and do necessary measures from the ground to stop the transmission of the virus, the senator is putting words in their mouths. Clearly, they haven't seen the real situation on the ground. Despite numerous efforts of news outlets to report the current status of the hospitals, they refuse to listen and only do what they think is good for their own agenda. Even if she reasoned out that she was pertaining to the front liners in the government, aren't they doing their part already? The LGUs are already exhausted but are not backing out from this fight. Heck, they are even carrying the burden of the national government's programs. The return of the stranded individuals and the distribution of the social amelioration program was something they didn't prepare for.

We are clearly almost going in circles with the virus -- going back and forth on lockdowns, closing and reopening business establishments, which has left a lot of people exhausted as well. The clamor for clear-cut solutions to the pandemic is too loud, but feels like being unheard in the national scale. But my salutes goes to all who are working in the LGU for they know the true score and the true story of how COVID attacks an area. They are the ones who have been working non-stop to contain the virus, along with the medical personnel at the hospitals.

It is true that the economy is dying but we also need to pay attention to those at the front lines of this pandemic. They know better at how the hospitals are dealing with this virus. Nobody wanted this in the first place anyway. As new quarantine status was revealed last week, I hope that we also do our part to lighten the load of those working so hard to keep the virus away. Simple: Wear your masks, practice social distancing and wash your hands