MGCQ for Dagupan is overdue

By Leonardo Micua

 

LIKE many others, we are optimistic that beginning June 1, under Modified General Community Quarantine, life will be much better for us all in Dagupan than when we were under the Enhanced Community Quarantine and two months later under the General Community Quarantine.

Sans any guideline yet from the city government, we hope that MGCQ will enable the city and people to transition to new normal unless Mayor Brian Lim still makes a last-ditch appeal to the Inter-Agency Task Force to desist and keep our status quo.

Recall that when IATF thought we were ready for MGCQ, he sent an urgent appeal to IATF to keep the place under GCQ, claiming that we have not succeeded yet in containing COVID-19 in Dagupan.

With no a single confirmed case of COVID-19 in Dagupan to date, there is no valid reason for Brian to still want to continue to keep us under GCQ unless he has a hidden personal agenda that we are not aware of.  It would be heartless for him to stay with GCQ to continue to prevent residents from resuming their livelihood activities after more than two months of being quarantined.

Or is he? As we were writing this column, we received a phone call and the man on the other end said the Sangguniang Panlungsod was set to hold a special session the next day, Friday. He was not aware of the agenda yet but we had a hunch it will be the MGCQ for Dagupan as announced few hours ago by Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque as a possible agenda.

Like all the rest, we believe that MGCQ would be useless if there is not enough public transportation to go by without it, many of our population cannot reach their workplaces. If only few units will be allowed to ply their routes as in GCQ, it’s unlikely we can transition fast to the new normal.

As things stand today, the city’s POSO under GCO barred all out-of-town jeepneys from entering Dagupan even if their drivers and operators already issued special permits to operate their usual Dagupan routes from the LTFRB. Dagupan-based taxis were not also allowed by Brian under GCQ for no valid reason. Hopefully under MGCQ, Brian will no longer defy LTFRB.

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During the lockdown, my wife and I were in close touch with our relatives in New Zealand and Australia to see how our granddaughters and daughter were faring.  

In New Zealand, the cities were also placed on lockdown – level 4, the highest alert level for more than a month. My two granddaughters, one in junior college and another in primary (year 4), had to stop going to school and instead made to attend online classes at home with their teachers – 30 minutes for each subject.

The online Google classes continued for more than a month even when New Zealand’s alert status was downgraded to Level 3. They finally returned to their classrooms two weeks ago when the alert status was further downgraded to Level 2.

My youngest granddaughter, Isabelle, said her friend Rene, daughter of a woman from Kalinga married to a New Zealander, had to be provided a new laptop by the Ministry of Education when her laptop broke down in the middle of her Google class. 

Meanwhile, my son who works as a telecommunications engineer and data analyst in Wellington was in Auckland working from home ever since the country was placed on alert Level 4. He said he is ready to return to Wellington now that no new cases are being registered with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the helm.

One notable thing about New Zealand is that not one of its more than 200 registered COVID-19 cases was confined in a hospital, only in their homes. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

They said Ardern conquered COVID-19 through both science and leadership.

In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison applied the same strategy though the country was never placed on lockdown. My daughter Chammy continuously attended school, strolled and biked around the park, went fishing by the lake at Tuncurry on weekends.

Though his government did not quarantine its citizens, Australia was able to flatten the curve through the full use of science and decisive leadership, like Ardern did, whom he invited as his guest during a cabinet meeting.

Canberra (capital of Australia) is now leading western nations in demanding an independent investigation that can pinpoint where the coronavirus exactly originated, a move that displeased China.

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