LAW ENFORCERS intercepted in the last three months 2,012 locally stranded individuals for failing to show valid travel documents as they were coming home or passing through the city through the airport and other access points.
In a report, the Task Force Davao said most of these individuals were from Luzon as they were collared while trying to evade Covid-19 quarantine protocol points.
The report said 1,444 were on their way to other places and that they were eventually escorted to the exit points on the way to their homes. “For those who are passing-by only and they were not subjected to the mandatory RT-PCR test, we escorted them to the city boundaries where they will exit to ensure that they will not make a stop in the city,” said Col. Consolito Yecla, commander of the military unit.
Yecla said the unit and other law enforcement agencies supervising checkpoints have intensified the campaign to regulate passage of the people as “we consider everyone as a possible carrier, so it is vital that they do not make a stop and might infect the residents,”
Personnel of the City Traffic and Transport Management Office brought the city residents, 568 of them, to Covid-19 testing centers so they could undergo reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests and undergo protocol measures.
“I admired the patients and professionalism of soldiers and SCAAs in identifying the LSIs. We need to elicit information to be able to identify them as LSIs,” he said as the interception of LSIs started in July.
The interception of LSI began in July after the national government implemented the “Balik Probinsya” program so that those in Metro Manila who wanted to go home to their provinces could be brought home.
Mayor Sara Z. Duterte ordered that all those coming home to the city through the airport must show negative RT-PCR results taken at most 72 hours earlier, or must undergo such results upon arrival so that appropriate measures could be implemented.
Those using the city as exit points should be escorted to these points to prevent them from roaming around the city.
