Valenzuela City will start prohibiting all enclosed establishments in the city from manually collecting the details of their customers and visitors for contact tracing next month, in line with the local government's "No QR Code, No Entry" policy.
Mayor Rex Gatchalian said in a Twitter post that an order coming from his office will be circulated to owners or officials of private and public establishments in the city to adhere to the rules under the recently passed Ordinance No. 783 or the "Valenzuela Contact Tracing Application Ordinance."
Gatchalian, in his order, said that starting Oct. 5, "all indoor/enclosed establishments in the city" shall have obtained the “ValTrace” application, which must solely be used to collect contact tracing information of their customers or visitors.
This means, handing out contact tracing forms will no longer be allowed.
"It is also mandatory for all indoors/enclosed business establishments to deploy at their respective entrance, scanning employees who shall use ValTrace scanners before allowing customers and employees to go inside the establishment's premise," the order read.
The order was made as the local government expressed belief that the "pen which the customers repeatedly used is a potential transmitter of the virus" and that "the manual log-in of data is utterly useless due to the fact that such process is not linked to the system of the 'ValTrace,'" among others.
Gatchalian warned that failure to comply "will be accordingly dealt," particularly referring to fines and revocation of business permits indicated under the ordinance.