A Cebu City resident’s guide to getting a green quarantine pass

The Cebu City government will be distributing enhanced community quarantine passes starting March 28, 2020. | Photo Courtesy of Cebu City PIO

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Stuck inside their homes, Cebu City residents may still be at a loss on how they can survive this enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) implemented at noon on Saturday, March 28, 2020.

The Cebu City government has just released the process of the distribution in a meeting with barangay captains on Saturday afternoon. They also released 250,000 green quarantine passes for residents in all 80 barangays.

Read more: DILG: Quarantine passes are city government’s prerogative

Lawyer Jose Daluz, III, said the process is simple and will be convenient for the households.

The barangays will go house to house in their sitios to knock on the households for manual application. The application form will be filled up by the head of the family.

The head of the family must list all members of their households and nominate three members to use the green ECQ pass. However, the ECQ pass can only be used by one person at a time.

In the case of more than one family per household, the barangay has the discretion to provide more than one quarantine pass.

Read more: Quarantine passes to limit movement in barangays

After filling up the application form, the barangay worker will provide the family with a generated code. This code will match the code of the quarantine pass.

As a safety feature, the quarantine pass will also have a control number, but this is only for the government to use in monitoring the number of passes being released around the city.

If the household is composed of only senior citizens, then the barangay must assign a worker to serve as their guardian. This guardian may also be an immediate neighbor. Senior Citizens are not allowed to leave their homes unless they need medical care.

Read more: Stay at home order for Cebu City minors, elderly inked

The family will immediately be given an ECQ pass with a generated code after completing the fill-up form.

Since the filing of the document may take time, the barangay worker may choose to give the pass first and collect the form later on as long as the barangay worker has listed the names of the household members.

For villages and subdivisions with a recognized association, the application may be coursed through the association. The association will be the ones to deal with the barangay. They will also be responsible for the distribution of the passes to their resident households.

The same process may also be applied to condominium unit owners or apartment unit owners. The residential administrator or building administrator should coordinate with the barangays.

Boarding houses, renters

Councilor Franklyn Ong, the president of Cebu City’s Association of Barangay Councils, said that with a limited number of green passes being released as of Saturday, the barangays were encouraged to prioritize single-family houses.

Boarding houses and renters will be dealt with later when additional passes can be distributed.

He encouraged the barangays to provide these establishments a single temporary ECQ pass, most likely to the landlord, so someone can still provide for the needs of the renters.

Once additional passes will be delivered to the barangay, the boarders or renters may now get passes either per room or per unit.

The landlord must provide a list of his or her boarders — how many boarders are in one room or unit, and how many of these can be considered a family or cluster.

Ong said they could not give one pass to all boarders because this would defeat the purpose of limiting mobility in the city.

“Atong awhagon ang mga barangay nga unahon na lang usa ang mga single-family houses. Unya na lang ang mga boarders. Kasabot man ta nga daghan kaayog boarders diri sa syudad, pero di man na nato mahatagan tanan,” said Ong.

(We urge the barangays to prioritize the single-family houses. They can deal with boarders later. We understand that there are many boarders and renters in the city, but we cannot provide them all with passes.)

Going online

For the next five days, the application for the quarantine passes is manual and the barangays are responsible for collating the data of all households. This data will be submitted to the city for encoding.

In a week or two, the city government will be launching an online and mobile quarantine app that can be used to check the quarantine pass database.

If the residents will lose or damage their quarantine pass, they can access this online app and enter the generated code matching their pass. They will get a digital copy of the ECQ pass and can show this to any law enforcement personnel, who seeks for it.

The online app could also process more applications for passes, but Daluz said the launching of the app might not reach the five-day deadline of the release of the passes.

Still, once it is launched, it will make the ECQ passes to be more convenient for the residents./dbs