MCPO chief: First day of GCQ generally peaceful, more traffic

The MCPO or the Mandaue City Police Office is expecting more traffic and more passengers entering and exiting the Mandaue City as more people head to work with the city under general community quarantine. | Brian Ochoa

CEBU CITY, Philippines — On the first day of the general community quarantine (GCQ) for Mandaue City has turned out to be generally peaceful with fewer complaints, but with a bit more traffic.

Police Colonel Jonathan Abella Mandaue City Police Office (MCPO) chief, said that the first day of GCQ went by smoothly in terms of entering and exiting the city, which was monitored by the border checkpoints.

Read more: Mandaue experiences moderate to heavy traffic on its first day of GCQ

Abella said that since nothing changed with their security deployment in all their checkpoint areas, all that were left was to expect inconveniences brought by traffic.

“Since more people have gone out to go to work, we were really expecting heavier traffic,” said Abella.

He said that the moderate to heavy traffic were surprisingly manageable and the public were also very understanding.

Despite the slower flow of vehicles as the police in checkpoints were still asking for the identification cards and company documents from the public entering the city, Abella said that the public were prepared and had complied with the requests of the policemen.

“It was still the same with (what we had during) the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) but with more vehicles,” said Abella.

The policemen might not have encountered problems on the first day of GCQ, but Abella said they would be expecting worse situations in the coming days as more people were expected to start going out.

Read more: EO issued for Mandaue City’s GCQ guidelines

With this, Abella said that the police would remain strict with their policies to be able to achieve peace and order in the city.

Abella said that they there would not be any problem as long as the public would be able to comply with the necessary health protocols being practiced in the city as well as the necessary documents needed to be able to enter the city.

“It is best for the people who wil be entering the city to have the complete and necessary documents to pass through the borders,” said Abella./dbs