LCP chair to mayors: Be patient, stop cutting vaccine line

Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella who heads the League of Cities in the Philippines (LCP) is urging his fellow mayors to patiently wait for their turn to be vaccinated and to not cut the line. CDN Digital Photo | Morexette Marie Erram

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Stop cutting the vaccine line and be patient for one’s turn.

This was the statement of League of Cities in the Philippines (LCP) chairperson, Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella, after at least five mayors in the country have been charged for having been vaccinated when President Rodrigo Duterte has specifically instructed otherwise.

Labella reminded the mayors that one of the conditions that the World Health Organization (WHO) has imposed for countries to get shares in the vaccines is sticking to the priority groups especially the health workers.

President Duterte has also ordered the local chief executives that the vaccines must be first given to the health workers before them, which means that the mayors who already took the vaccines were essentially violating the President’s orders.

As the chairperson of the LCP, Labella reminded his fellow mayors that all of them are subject to the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG’s) guidelines.

Violating the priority line for the vaccines may entail administrative charges for them.

“Of course, akong mga higala, ato lang gyod hulaton (to my colleagues, let us just wait). Let’s follow the rules,” said Labella.

Labella encouraged all mayors to be prudent in their actions and be an example to citizens in patiently waiting for the doses of vaccines allotted for them.

It would only be proper that the health workers get the doses first as they face the virus head-on. Even though mayors are also frontliners in their own way, Labella said they are better off examples of patience as of this time. /rcg

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