Some of the people who were given and are allowed to go out and travel have been abusing the community quarantine exemption by engaging in non-essential travel anywhere and anytime they want, the Joint Task Force COVID Shield said on Sunday.
The community quarantine exemption is given to people whose jobs are considered as a necessity to provide basic goods and services to most Filipinos who are compelled to stay at home due to the threat of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Police Lt. Gen. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, commander of the JTF COVID Shield, said the reports they have been receiving disclosed that some people who are considered as APOR (Authorized Persons Outside Residence) are using the community quarantine exemption as an excuse to deliberately violate the quarantine rule against non-essential travel.
During the start of the lockdown in March, the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) listed persons who are allowed to cross city and municipal borders and stay out of their houses as their jobs are considered as part of frontline duties. They are called APORs.
Those given exemptions are listed as Authorized Persons Outside Residence (APOR). But the IATF stated that to be listed as APOR, a person must be: 1) working as a frontliner in the fight against COVID-19; 2) and working for industries permitted by the government to operate; and 3) that their presence outside of their communities and their travel must be work-related.
They were either issued with identification cards by the IATF for exemption from community quarantine, or are allowed to just present their company identification cards or other documents as proof of employment.
“It is clear that community quarantine exemption is given only for work-related purposes. The concept is the same with the issuance of quarantine passes which is issued by the local government units for only one member of the family to go out of their homes only to buy essential goods,” said Eleazar.
“Therefore, they should not use this exemption to engage in travel that is not connected to their job because this is really unfair to the majority of our kababayan who are strictly abiding (by) the government’s prohibition not to engage in non-essential travel in this time of pandemic,” he added.
Eleazar disclosed that the abuses of community quarantine exemption sometimes causes verbal confrontations at the quarantine checkpoints ( QCPs).
“Local police commanders will be instructed to task their personnel supervising and manning the QCPs to scrutinize the identification cards and other documents being presented to them by the essential workers, particularly on the home address and place of work, in order to determine whether or not the travel is essential,” said Eleazar.