Imposing a two-week “modified enhanced community quarantine”(MECQ) on Metro Manila and other provinces “would still yield the already failed results of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic” if the “anti-people leadership” of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) is not replaced, human rights alliance Karapatan asserted.
Petitioners from Mindanao want anti-terror law nullified
Individuals and a group from Mindanao who has experienced rights abuses and other forms of harassment are petitioning the Supreme Court to scrap Republic Act 11479 or the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 2020.
‘We urge the government to address our demands before it’s too late’
“They cannot blame many health workers for not applying for work because we are aware that the DOH and the Duterte administration do not care about our welfare. Many have resigned from their post because, for a long time, we are always neglected. We urge the government to increase the salaries of health workers, regularize contractuals and address our demands before it’s too late.”
The post ‘We urge the government to address our demands before it’s too late’ appeared first on Kodao Productions.
Health workers mourn death of colleague who died of COVID-19
Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) union members in private and public hospitals lit a candle for Judyn Bonn Suerte, a union leader from the Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center (JRRMMC) who succumbed to the virus on July 31.
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Members of health union alliance are mourning the passing of their colleague due to coronavirus disease 2019.
Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) union members in private and public hospitals lit a candle for Judyn Bonn Suerte, a union leader from the Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center (JRRMMC) who succumbed to the virus on July 31.
According to the group, Suerte and his wife are among the 20 JRRMMC health workers who are infected with COVID-19.
The group expressed indignation over the increasing number of health workers being infected by COVID-19 and the government’s neglect and incompetency. Based on the data from the Department of Health, there are 4,823 infected health workers and 38 already died.
Cristy Donguines, president of the JRMMC Employees Union-Alliance of Health Workers (JRRMMCEU-AHW) said they are saddened but angered at the same time of what happened to their colleague and other health workers who died fighting COVID-19.
“This administration does not value health workers. He did not even lay down comprehensive, systematic and scientific measures on how to curb the virus during his State of the Nation Address,” Donguines said.
Robert Mendoza, AHW president, honored their fellow health worker who “faithfully and courageously carry out his sworn duty, even at the point of risking his own life.”
Suerte left behind his wife and three children.
“While we are honoring him, we also denounce the injustice done to him. When he was already in a critical condition, the hospital abandoned its obligation and transferred him to Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital,” Mendoza said.
While the DOH protocol was to transfer all employees admitted to their respective hospitals with severe COVID-19 cases to any designated exclusive COVID-19 referral hospitals, the group said JRRMMC hospital could have treated its own employee.
Mendoza slammed the DOH for its inaction on the grievances of health workers. He said health workers from the San Lazaro Hospital, National Kidney and Transplant Institute and Lung Center of the Philippines have protested about their dire health, safety and working conditions but their demands have fallen on deaf ears.
Mendoza said Suerte was among the many health workers who actively called for their protection against the virus, free mandatory and regular swab testing to all health workers.
The group also conducted simultaneous red armband wearing as a tribute to all health workers who died fighting the virus in this time of commemoration of the Year of Filipino Health Workers.
They will also also hold nine days of candle lighting and series of actions for their campaign called #HealthWorkersLivesMatter.
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Post-Lenten Calvary
De Castro was responding to the most recent episode in the ABS-CBN Via Dolorosa: a plot being hatched by certain congressmen to seize the land, buildings, and equipment of the network in Quezon City and to crush the Lopezes by compelling them to pay the government nearly P2 trillion for a tax evasion offense the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) itself had declared they were not guilty of.
In plotting the seizure of ABS-CBN assets, these learned gentlemen are sending to the business community the disturbing message that they and their enterprises, like the Lopezes and their businesses, can always be harassed out of existence once they offend the Duterte regime. Expect would-be foreign investors to think twice about doing business in the Philippines — and some who are already here to seriously think about pulling out.
A Zoom meeting posted on Facebook showed three House members discussing that scheme. That virtual meeting apparently took place shortly after this same clique and its fellows, despite overwhelming public support for it (75% according to Social Weather Stations), killed a bill renewing the network’s franchise. They thus consigned its 11,000 employees and their families to the legions of Philippine unemployed and denied millions of Filipinos who don’t have cable a vital source of information on the pandemic and other issues of public relevance via the free TV and radio services of ABS-CBN.
So outrageous is the planned takeover and tax levy that one congressman and a senator said it would be illegal for the House to do either, and that whatever claims against the network owners these worthies still had is best brought to the courts. Another law-maker said doing so would be a form of oppression. And no, it wasn’t a member of the ineffectual so-called opposition in the Senate who said so. It was conservative senator and occasional Duterte ally Richard Gordon who correctly gave that scheme its appropriate name: oppression, which more tellingly translates in Filipino into pang–aapi. Even Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr. called what the House trio was planning to do thievery and warned them via Twitter that breaking into the network compound would be trespassing.
If as wealthy as they are, the Lopezes can be bullied and oppressed, so can the less affluent, and especially the poorest Filipinos. Pang-aapi and inaapi (oppression and being oppressed) are in fact the key words to describe what the regime is doing — and what is happening to millions of families in the country of our sorrows. For example, in a heartbreaking instance so symbolic of the inhumanity and cruelty at the core of State policy, a Manila court denied a political prisoner’s plea that she and her newborn be detained in a hospital instead of the Manila City Jail where the both of them would be in danger of contracting COVID-19. Not only was that plea denied; the court even separated mother and child.
Those who would dismiss what happened to them as an isolated case should realize that the shutdown of ABS-CBN has not only added to unemployment. It has also made providing for their children’s food, clothing, shelter, educational, health and other needs even more problematic.
One senator even added insult to injury. He made the less than brilliant suggestion that the 11,000 men and women soon to be former employees of the network “just look for other jobs.” But even in non-pandemic times jobs are so difficult to come by that hundreds of thousands of men and women have been forced to leave the country for employment even in war-torn countries and other places whose names they cannot even pronounce.
Even the overseas employment option has been denied Filipino nannies, nurses, domestics, construction workers, seamen and other workers. Because of the global pandemic, thousands of OFWs have also lost their jobs abroad and are desperately trying to survive where they are or to return home, where their present and future have never been as bleak.
Meanwhile, because of the closure of tens of thousands of business enterprises, millions of workers still in the country have already lost their livelihoods. They and their children are hungry and desperately looking for some means to get by. But to their calvary have been added not only the threat of contracting COVID-19 but also that of being arrested, fined from P1,000 to P5,000, and detained for not wearing the face masks many who literally don’t even know where the next meal is coming from cannot even afford to buy.
Broadcaster De Castro pointed out that it would only be common sense for anyone to realize that arresting people for not wearing face masks and hauling them off to the country’s overcrowded jails defeats the purpose of requiring them to use face masks and observe physical distancing so those already infected would not transmit the disease to others, since they would be more likely to contract the disease in the hell-holes we call Philippine prisons, and even while being transported to them.
But common sense is apparently not all that common in a regime whose response to the pandemic has basically been limited to intimidation and coercion as decreed by a president whose buzz words are “kill, kill, kill,” “shoot them dead,” and “arrest them all.” Not only are the country’s streets teeming with armed-to-the-teeth police and military personnel; even combat military vehicles have been deployed in some of those streets to intimidate the populace.
To escape both hunger and oppression, tens of thousands of Filipinos, with their families in tow, are also trying to flee the National Capital Region for the provinces, but are ending up stranded in such places as the piers and the domestic airport. Several thousands have been moved like cattle to Manila’s Rizal Memorial Stadium, where they’re packed so cheek-by-jowl that they and their children are more than likely to add to the 85,000 (as of July 30) of their countrymen already infected with COVID-19.
The only glimmer of hope in this pit of darkness is that after four harrowing years, what is happening to them and around them is awakening more and more Filipinos to the urgency of defending free expression, press freedom, the right to know, and freedom of assembly, the suppression of which, despite the pandemic, have been and are still the priorities of the current regime. The tipping point in the making of this awareness is what happened, and what is still likely to happen to ABS-CBN; the passage of the brazenly oppressive Anti-Terrorism Act; and the undeniable failure, as a group of University of the Philippines professors noted, of what passes for a policy to contain the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.
Thousands of Filipinos have thus made known their sentiments through noise barrages, petitions, statements of support for free expression, press freedom and human rights, and other means, with, in one incident, even some in the military no longer applauding the Commander-in-Chief’s rants and bad jokes, in the process recalling to us all in these times of disorder and sorrow that if Lent (death and suffering) has come, Easter (the resurrection) cannot be far behind.
Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter (@luisteodoro).
www.luisteodoro.com
Published in Business World
July 30, 2020
The post Post-Lenten Calvary appeared first on Bulatlat.
Government candor needed in fight vs COVID-19
The President gave the following assurances to the Filipino people:
• “Let us not despair… Sooner and not later, the virus that gobbled up thousands of lives will itself be laid to rest,” saying a vaccine for COVID-19 is just “around the corner.” He added that he had urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to prioritize the Philippines if China develops a vaccine for the virus, and to grant credit “if we have to buy [it].”
• “We are in a better position to weather the crisis caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic [because] our fiscal position is strong, our economic and fiscal management prudent and our banking system robust.”
• “Our actions are not perfect and I admit it. But all of us in government assure you we will not stop until we get things right and better for you.”
What’s the situation? While several giant pharmaceutical firms are racing to produce a vaccine for COVID-19 (with some firms saying one could be ready by November), most medical experts expect definitive results at the earliest in 2021. Certain rich nations, particularly the United States, have advanced funding to leading producers to ensure that bulk of the initial production of the vaccine would go to them once made available.
As regards the fiscal position of the government, the economic team has advised the House of Representatives that state funds are inadequate to meet the P1.3-trillion requirement of the economic recovery and investment stimulus bill it has already approved; the measure supposedly will help small and medium enterprises, pummelled by the pandemic, to survive and retain their workers. Also, in June the government already had incurred a P9-trillion debt due to loans acquired to fund the fight against COVID-19.
Responding to criticisms on the dearth of specific details of the anti-COVID program, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque has replied that Cabinet members, in pre-SONA briefings, had already tackled the details among themselves. The President, he said, merely touched on them in broad strokes. He called this “a new format for the SONA,” saying “We did not have a litany of figures that were heard during previous SONAs.”
He’s saying that the Cabinet is keeping to itself what they plan to do regarding the people’s health, lives and livelihood. And that talking about it is an innovation. Isn’t that denying the people the right to know about these concrete plans so they can properly respond? Isn’t levelling with the people – and the SONA is an apt venue for that – a requisite of good governance?
Yesterday, Philippine STAR’s frontpage headline read, “Gov’t pandemic plan now in ‘critical’ phase.” The news report’s lead paragraph said the action plan requires “‘aggressive’ testing and isolation of infected persons as well as greater involvement of local officials, especially in the enforcement of localized lockdowns.”
The announcement was made, at a press briefing Thursday, by retired Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., former AFP chief now chief implementer of the COVID-19 policy. Galvez explained (apparently for the first time) three phases of the government’s action plan with their respective timelines: The first phase was implemented from March to June; the second covers the period from July to September; and the third, from October to December 2020. Nothing said further beyond that period.
The overarching consideration in designing the action plans, Galvez stressed, is the need for the government to strike a balance between ensuring public health and reopening the economy, gradually from the shutdown imposed since the middle of March.
In the current second phase, he pointed out, the aim is to achieve two things: 1) contain and manage the emerging new COVID-19 infection cases (totalling around 90,000 as of Thursday); and 2) at the same time, continue the capacity building – expansion of intensive care (ICU) beds and the resiliency of vulnerable communities.
How will these aims be achieved? Galvez said the national government will “shift the role to the LGUs (local government units),” citing as example what Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte has been doing: localized lockdown; actually there have been others. “The implementation of different strategies on prevention, detection, isolation, treatment and reintegration will be given to the LGUs,” he said.
Galvez acknowledged that the reopening of the economy has spiked new COVID-19 cases “because we have loosened our restrictions.” And so, he added, “in order to effectively manage COVID cases, the responsibility now shifts to the LGUs and to the private companies and to the individual citizen.” He enjoined the latter “to share the responsibility by having what we call the localized lockdown in barangay and street [levels], [by] building a massive education info campaign for the strict enforcement and discipline on the minimum health standard.”
Had the LGUs been consulted before this decision was taken? Galvez didn’t say. Maybe many of the mayors of Metro Manila can assume the responsibilities passed on to them, but what of other LGUs in other parts of the country?
“We will focus on prevention, detection, tracing and testing and efficient isolation,” he emphasized. Can all the LGUs cope with these tasks? Let’s hear from Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong, the designated “czar” for contact tracing.
Magalong said that when the national government sent online diagnostic questionnaires to the 1,900 LGUs, only 600 responded. Worse, he pointed out, only 0.68 percent of them were found to have “relatively good” contact-tracing systems. Most LGUs, he added, need about three weeks more before they can set up ideal contact-tracing teams that will locate the close contacts of identified COVID-19 patients. On average, only about eight close contacts of each patient are currently being traced, whereas the benchmark for urban centers should be 30-37 identified close contacts, he added.
Moreover, Magalong said, LGUs should prepare their own quarantine facilities as the number of patients may increase in the next three weeks, once the contact tracing system in the country becomes effective. Can most of the LGUs comply with this requirement, and how soon?
* * *
Email: satur.ocampo@gmail.com
Published in Philippine Star
August 1, 2020
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Balik-Tanaw | Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: An invitation to abundant life
By SR. MAUREEN CATABIAN, RGS
Isaiah 55:1-3
Psalm 145: 8-9, 15-18
Romans 8: 35, 37-39
Matthew 14: 13-21
Our God is marvelous and awesome. Truly a God of abundance. A God who is the Creator of the universe (now Megaverse) took a grand risk in Loving us His creation by establishing a covenant with humanity- and everlasting at that! “I will make with you an everlasting covenant” – no fixed or definite time which is yet to come in the future or will expire in time. But is a timeless “Now” which is always present at each moment all the time. Such everlasting covenant is an invitation to abundant life!
Isaiah says : “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come,buy wine and mild without money and without price.” With these prophecy of Isaiah, I Imagine a world where there is no hunger because all things are available for All – for free because it is flowing from God’s abundance because of His eternal covenant with us!
The prophet Isaiah continues: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Looking at our world now, I also want to ask- Why spend your money to produce arms and weapons that kill? Why not instead spend on healthy food and safe water to prolong life? Or good education that liberates us from ignorance? Or build modest comfortable homes available for all to sustain human dignity? Instead, why are there individuals, families and communities who feed and survive on trash? The prophecy continues: “Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” Isaiah is prophesying against the global issue of Food insecurity and global inequality!
The Letter of Paul to the Romans asserts – “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?” Nothing is supposed to separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus. In Christ Jesus, we are in communion with God. In the Eucharist where we receive the body and blood of Christ daily we are made one with God. God’s abundant love and mercy will keep us united with Him – in an everlasting covenant. Therefore, God is the only ground of our being. Nothing less.
But how come many of our brothers and sisters are separated from God’s love due to famine, distress, hardship, persecution, displacement, violence , poverty and death. Simply because, we have systematically broken our relations with this God of life and abundance. Our governments have created structures and supported systems which aggravated this separation by worshiping the god of mammon in the altar of profit. As we can see, the coronavirus pandemic has nakedly exposed and is slowly breaking down all these propped up global economic structures and systems that dehumanizes the world. We cannot breathe anymore!
In the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus had compassion to the great crowd who followed him, he summons the disciples “They need not go away; you give them something to eat”. Taking the five loaves and two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the crowds.” The good news is clear. Jesus in communion with the Father has brought providence and abundance. Humanity in communion with the God of Justice can bring liberation to peoples from the shackles of untold suffering and oppression due to inequality. The disciples on the other hand, started from doubt and insecurity when they replied “we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish”. Yet, what the disciples received from Jesus, they gave to the crowds. Then, they took up what was left over of the broken pieces. Everything was shared. So they (more than five thousand men with women and children) all went home nourished well and contented. Indeed, the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made. And we shall breathe again!
Balik-Tanaw is a group blog of Promotion of Church People’s Response. The Lectionary Gospel reflection is an invitation for meditation, contemplation, and action. As we nurture our faith by committing ourselves to journey with the people, we also wish to nourish the perspective coming from the point of view of hope and struggle of the people. It is our constant longing that even as crisis intensifies, the faithful will continue to strengthen their commitment to love God and our neighbor by being one with the people in their dreams and aspirations. The Title of the Lectionary Reflection would be Balik –Tanaw , isang PAGNINILAY . It is about looking back (balik) or revisiting the narratives and stories from the Biblical text and seeing ,reading, and reflecting on these with the current context (tanaw).
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Call of health workers ‘an indictment of government’s COVID-19 response’
“This should be a wake up call for the Duterte government. The press con itself is one big commentary on how the govt (mis)handled the COVID-19 response and on the poor and inadequate leadership of the Department of Health and IATF.”
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Several groups expressed support to the health care professionals’ call for timeout amid the rising cases of coronavirus disease 2019 in the country and overwhelmed health care system.
On Saturday, Aug. 1, at least 40 medical societies sent their letter to President Duterte calling for a two-week enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Mega Manila “to refine pandemic control strategies.”
“We are waging a losing battle against COVID-19 and we need to draw up a consolidated, definitive plan of action,” they said in the letter.
The medical frontliners urged the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to address the following issues: hospital workforce efficiency, failure of case finding and isolation, failure of contact tracing and quarantine, transportation safety, workplace safety, public compliance with self-protection, [and] social amelioration.
In a statement, Gene Nisperos, a community medicine practitioner and University of the Philippines professor,said that the Malacanang should take this seriously “rather than take its usual cavalier attitude.”
“This should be a wake up call for the Duterte government. The press con itself is one big commentary on how the govt (mis)handled the COVID-19 response and on the poor and inadequate leadership of the Department of Health and IATF,” Nisperos said.
Read: ‘Militarist’ COVID-19 response ‘may lead to bigger crisis,’ groups warn
Renato Reyes Jr., secretary general of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, also maintained that the call of health professionals is “an indictment of the failed COVID-19 response of the government.”
Reyes said Duterte relied on a militarist population method to control the spread of the virus. He added that the three months of ECQ had been wasted because “testing was not ramped up and the necessary upgrade of the health system was not undertaken.”
“The strict quarantine, at the early months of the pandemic, was supposed to buy the health system time to adjust to the increase in COVID patients, while undertaking mass testing while the population was still in place. This was not done,” he said.
Duque should go
Amid the bleak situation, Citizens Urgent Response to End Covid-19 (CURE Covid) urged Duterte to replace Health Secretary Francisco Duque and the former generals who are in-charge of the IATF.
Read: What’s wrong with Secretary Duque?
The group said that the people need competent health experts and professionals and “not political players and ex-generals, at the helm of our COVID-19 response.”
The group lamented that the urgent appeal of our COVID-19 frontliners, as well as the sound recommendations of Vice President Leni Robredo, CURE Covid and other groups for a comprehensive, effective, humane, participatory and transparent response to the crisis have repeatedly fallen on the deaf ears of the DOH and the IATF. the group said.
Nisperos also said that the removal of Duque as well as the replacement of the entire DOH and IATF leadership “is imperative at this point.”
He said that the COVID-19 response will not improve “if it is still under the same lackluster, reactive, and punitive leadership of generals and military men. We need decisive and competent leadership from the health sector.”
Mega Manila consists of the National Capital Region, Central Luzon, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon (Calabarzon) and Mindoro, Marinduque, Rombon, and Palawan (Mimaropa).
Meanwhile, COVID-19 National Task Force Chairperson and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said that the IATF will discuss the frontliners’ call on Monday.
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