My Facebook challenge

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

 

IN case, you haven’t noticed, there is one common reaction to uniformed personnel at border and quarantine checkpoints in Pangasinan – Masyadong relaxed and tamad!

Why is that so? You can’t blame them if the sight of government personnel at checkpoints does not command respect. They are often seen seated, not wearing their standard caps, playing with their phone gadgets or tablets, busy reading and replying to texts, giving passers-by the impression that to expect them to stand guard respectably would be a distraction while on duty.

I’m sure there are still among them who take their responsibility at the checkpoints seriously and zealously carry on as respected uniformed personnel.  But I’m afraid they are more the exception than the rule today.

Here’s a challenge to residents in Pangasinan – TAKE A PHOTO of uniformed personnel at checkpoints who are busy playing or texting with gadgets instead of standing on guard, THEN POST YOUR PICS ON FACEBOOK – TO SHOW TO THEIR SUPERIORS THAT THEIR UNIFORMED PERSONNEL AT THE CHECKPOINTS LACK THE DISCIPLINE AND TRAINING TO DO THEIR JOBS, RESPECTABLY, PROPERLY AND WELL! (Please identity the location of checkpoint and time of photo taken, no names needed).

If you can forward your photos to us (email – punch.sunday@gmail.com / Facebook –Sunday Garcia), we’ll post/publish your photos.

Let’s do this to help improve the image of our police and military personnel, not to deride our respectable institutions.

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OPTIONAL POLICY? Speaking of checkpoints, is the Dagupan City government serious about its new contact-tracing protocol, requiring incoming travelers from other provinces to register themselves via QR codes? From the looks of it, it has become an optional requirement – depending on the time of day and alertness of police (and volunteers?) on duty.  

I have crossed the city borders twice last week, and twice I was never told to stop to explain anything, i.e., where I came from, etc… nor asked to show my QR code. Yet, the big signage before the border checkpoints read: STOP and show your QR code. 

Was the announcement of the new protocol for PR purposes only to show that the Lim administration is on the job, on top of the campaign vs. COVID-19? If that was the intention, the administration’s credibility is slowly being eroded instead because of inconsistency in the implementation.  

But if this new protocol for contact-tracing is finally acknowledged to be unnecessary, it should promptly withdraw it, remove the signage, retrain personnel. At least this will show that the city administration acknowledges lessons learned and is quick to recalibrate its policies. To just allow the program to be totally ignored over time, is a display of mismanagement, absence of responsibility to the city residents, and another unstudied policy.    

So, pray tell, what’s the status in Dagupan?

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PANGASINAN IS NOT READY.  It is evident the Duterte administration is bent on fully opening the economy to hasten the recovery. But are the local governments ready and prepared to meet the challenges that will be posed by the expected 2^nd round of surge before the vaccines can be distributed and applied?

In Pangasinan, the debate whether the continuing spread of the virus is through carriers from Metro Manila or is already locally transmitted should end today.

The Espino provincial administration has done everything possible to stop the infection it being sourced from OFWs, locally stranded individuals. It has launched aggressive testing, and started to organize for more effective contact-tracing. It has opened isolation facilities. What needs to be done has been done except in one area – the lack of strict enforcement and administration of health and social distancing protocol at the barangay level.

With the expected full resumption of economic activities, it will easily give everyone the impression that COVID-19 is already a thing of the past, that everything is back to normal, that vaccine or no vaccine, that wearing face masks and shields is already a matter of personal choice. This is when the most serious consequences can be expected.

If our town and city mayors become passive, less cautious and tolerant, we will all be back at Enhanced Community Quarantine level with one difference – no commercial establishments, work places will be closed. This situation will make efforts to contain COVID-19 far, far more challenging, hospitals will again be full with isolation cases, more frontliners falling from sheer exhaustion or simply die from the infection from the virus itself.

The only way to prepare our communities to the new normal, or to prepare us for the worst scenario, is to work on the discipline – to strictly enforce and comply with the health and social distancing protocol must be imposed today, not tomorrow.

To achieve this, it is necessary for our mayors and barangay kapitans, accompanied by uniformed policemen, to be seen out in the streets, as often as they could 24/7, for two weeks!

Once the discipline already becomes a habit, we can be certain that any reported or noted spike in infection can still be easily contained. Barring this, it will, indeed, come to “survival of the fittest,” and many will not be lucky this time.

The ball is in your court, Guv Spines and mayors! Let’s prepare Pangasinan for the new normal which is already here.

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