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FACILITATING the quarantine even further starting in March will address fragmented travel restrictions imposed by local government units (LGUs) across the country, according to the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).
“There is a need to harmonize and streamline the different travel restrictions imposed by the LGUs on domestic travelers. These vary from province to province. Placing the entire country under a quarantine classification would allow DILG to harmonize fragmented travel regulations across the country, ”said DILG undersecretary and spokesman Jonathan Malaya in a statement.
He said they see an urgent need to eliminate redundancy in travel requirements for domestic tourists and impose less stringent requirements by managing health risks through other means.
The DILG has organized a technical working group that is currently working with various local government leagues to simplify local regulations for domestic travel, as well as recommend the best options to encourage domestic leisure travel to revive the heavily affected tourism sector and related industries while managing the transmission risks of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the DILG official said.
“People are confused about the travel regulations because they vary from province to province. While some LGUs require a travel authorization, others do not. Some LGUs require an anti-gene test, others do not. Some LGUs require swab testing, others do not. Some even require a 14-day quarantine regardless of the swab result. We need the regulations to be simplified and placing the country under a classification would help in the ongoing harmonization, ”Malaya said.
“We must carefully analyze whether the regulations we impose are consistent with scientific data on preventing the transmission of Covid-19,” he added.
Citing figures from the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), Malaya said that quarantine restrictions implemented since March 2020 have caused a total loss of revenue of P1.04 trillion that year.
On average, that translated to P2.8 billion in lost wages, or an annual loss of income of P23,000 per worker, he said.
Malaya, however, clarified that a less restrictive quarantine classification or harmonization of national travel regulations would not abandon health protocols without taking into account the pandemic.
“We are not saying that we will remove all travel restrictions and return to where we came from. That is impossible because Covid-19 is still here. We only need to modernize because we need to revive our economy and address the hunger, job losses and economic opportunities that have arisen as a result of travel restrictions, ”he said.
He said that 30 percent of the public still cannot go to work and 50 percent of the people cannot take public transportation.
“People need to be able to travel to go to work or to earn a living,” he said.
Malaya said the domestic airline industry has also asked DILG to address this issue, as local airlines have accumulated a net revenue loss of 47.4 billion pesos in September of last year alone.
“Despite the reopening of major regional airports, the domestic airline industry has experienced a drop in domestic passengers and domestic cargo carried due to fragmented LGU regulations compared to our ASEAN neighbors, where Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have already revived their national travel industry for 2019 levels, ”he said.
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