Vice President Leni Robredo sees the trust of private partners as manifested in their willingness to help fellow Filipinos a major reason for her continued efforts to keep their relief operations going in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Photo by Charlie Villegas / OVP / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN)
“It sure hasn’t been easy, given the limitations before us, but what has fueled our response operations during these difficult few months is the wellspring of generosity, of willingness, and of heart that our fellow Filipinos have shown,” she said in a Facebook post, Thursday.
“Trust is the currency that we work with, and amid the hardships, one thing is clear: that Filipinos will step up for each other, especially when it matters most,” Robredo added.
The vice president expressed gratitude for the private sector’s support releasing the latest report on her office's COVID-19 response operations.
These include the distribution of 231,450 personal protective equipment (PPE) sets for frontline workers, 17,271 food and care packages, P20 million-worth extraction and test kits, hot meals and relief packs for communities.
As of August 22, the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and its private partners have set up temporary shelters for medical personnel in four hospitals under the Oasis Project and 12 dormitories in Metro Manila.
The report also cited the gadget donation drive under the Bayanihan E-skwela program raised P3.5 million worth of laptops, computers, and tablets for students.
In Cebu, OVP’s Bayanihan Sugbuanon project managed to provide nine dorms, free shuttle service that served 11,768 passengers, ferry service, swab booths, and a swab cab, a free transportation service to and from the Bayanihan Cebu Swabbing Center.
Other assistance include community hubs for distance learning, free bus rides for locally stranded individuals, and online markets in the cities of Pasig, Quezon, and Zamboanga, which generated a total of P12.6 million in sales for small market vendors and tricycle drivers.
“Our list of initiatives has grown longer over the past five months, driven primarily by a natural tendency of filling the gaps we find. In every initiative we launched, a new need was discovered—each one just as pressing, affecting the everyday lives of our people,” she wrote.
“We knew we could not sit idly by, and that our actions must always be geared towards the bigger goal of empowering those that we assist, as we march towards our hopes for a better normal,” Robredo stressed.