Barangays decry lack of ECQ passes

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Barangays in Cebu City are asking the city government for more quarantine passes.

Barangay Lahug officials have written to Mayor Edgardo Labella raising concerns on the lack of quarantine passes. Lahug village chief, Hazel Muaña-Empleo said the number of actual households in Lahug disregarding boarding houses and condominiums reach more than 12,000.

However, the city only allotted 7,000 passes to be distributed in Lahug, creating a deficit of 5,000.

Those without passes will be trapped inside their homes especially as the quarantine pass system will be strictly implemented in Cebu City starting Wednesday, April 1, 2020, Muaña-Empleo said.

“Simply put, there is not enough quarantine passes for actual households in our barangay,” said Empleo.

A similar situation happened in Barangay Talamban where only 4,000 quarantine passes were provided to a barangay with 13,000 actual households. Talamban village chief, Darrio Arcilla, told CDN Digital that they tried to ask for additional passes from the city government but were only told that they could ask for additional passes during their meeting with Lawyer Jose Daluz, III, and Councilor Raymond Alvin Garcia on Saturday, March 28, 2020.

However, the Office of the Mayor declined their request stating that the passes provided are the only ones to be released to limit the people’s movements.

Arcilla said they cannot understand why such a deficit should happen when every household was promised a single pass.

“Among gibuhat naghimo mig barangay quarantine pass, kanang bond paper nalang, aron makagawas ang ubang household nga mopalit sa ilang kailangan. Pero diri ra gyod na sa Talamban,” said Arcilla.

(What we did is to distribute barangay quarantine passes made of bond paper so other households can still go out and buy their needs. But it is only honored in Talamban.)

Arcilla urged Labella to find a solution for the issue as the quarantine will last a month and if the people grow hungry in their homes they will violate the executive order causing chaos in the barangays.

In Guadalupe, village chief Michael Gacasan has implemented another strategy to compensate for the deficit of at least 11,000.

Guadalupe as the biggest barangay has at least 20,000 households, but received only 9,000 passes.

Gacasan told CDN Digital that they only gave one pass per compound because of the lack of passes. He is amenable to this because there are fewer people going out of the barangay, but he admits that the people have been fighting with their neighbors over the use of the quarantine passes.

“Gituyo man na kuwang kay aron dili maggawas-gawas ang mga tawo. Unsaon man ta na? Puli-puli lang gud sila. Pero gasige na silag shagit-shagit dinhi gawas sa among barangay hall,” said Gacasan.

(The deficit was done to limit the people going out. What can we do? They just have to share the pass. But the residents are angry about it, they are shouting outside our barangay hall.)

Guadalupe is also mulling to implement the barangay quarantine passes, but Gacasan said he will need to ask the police chief’s permission to do so. /rcg