For now, Davaoenos do not need to present their food and medicine pass to supermarkets and grocery stores during the enhanced community quarantine.
Mayor Sara Duterte, in her radio interview with the Davao City Disaster Radio on Saturday, said that they will still assess the initial implementation of ECQ before making further changes.
“If we see that there are still many people going out even though they do not have the (FM) pass, we will demand for the food and medicine pass. For now, we still do not have that. We will have to first see the compliance of the public,” she said.
But Duterte appreciated how some establishments are taking the initiative of requiring the FM pass for any transaction starting on Tuesday.
Last Friday, City Hall postponed the implementation of the FM pass from April 4 to April 7 to give time to the barangay officials to distribute the IDs to their constituents.
Duterte also said wet markets should have a system to make sure that customers do not have direct contacts with other buyers.
“We are trying to avoid close contact with other people as they might still be potential carriers of the virus,” she said.
She also said that it would be the new normal for Davao City even after the community quarantine is lifted. Some countries like Singapore, which believed that it already contained the virus, have suffered a second wave of infection when they relaxed their quarantine measures.
Market schedule
Meanwhile, to minimize the number of buyers, wet markets will operate on a new schedule, which would be determined by the barangays.
Each village official will come up with a rotation schedule for people to buy from the public market.
“There is already a schedule (from barangay captains), they have already made plans. One example is in Calinan and they intend to implement this to lessen the usual number of people visiting the market,” she added.
Employees ID
Meanwhile, she said that the employee ID would not be a substitute for the FM pass.
“If you are going to the grocery and they (security) will ask for your FM pass, you cannot buy your needs if you only have your employee’s ID,” she said.
The city mayor suggested to family members to list the working employee on the FM pass.
“Because if you are going to expose the two members of your family, apart from the one who is working, there will be a number of household members likely to already be a carrier of the virus inside your homes,” Duterte said.
“If you understand, every time you go out of the house you are already exposing yourself to the possibility of carrying the virus,” she added.
She also appealed to everybody to cooperate since it will only extend the duration of the enhanced community quarantine.
