CEBU CITY – Returning Overseas Filipinos (ROFs) arriving in Cebu are still paying their quarantine expenses a week after President Rodrigo Duterte assured that the national government will shoulder the cost of their stay in quarantine hotels.
With this, the Cebu Provincial Board on Monday passed a resolution asking the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Infectious Disease (IATF-MEID) to allocate funds needed for the quarantine protocols that the body insisted to implement in Cebu.
According to the resolution authored by Board Member John Ismael Borgonia, ROFs are the ones paying for their quarantine hotel stay contrary to what the President announced last June 21.
The resolution “is requesting the IATF-MEID to consider the timely allocation of budget for the payment of hotel quarantine facility and other necessary expenses pursuant to the pronouncement of President Rodrigo Duterte which is primarily intended for the welfare of returning overseas Filipinos."
After Duterte’s announcement, the province decided to follow the IATF guidelines that require 10-day quarantine hotel stay for all arriving international passengers at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport.
The province used to enforce its own protocols which included swab-upon-arrival policy and a shorter hotel quarantine.
"Unlike OFWs, whose quarantine accommodation expenses are shouldered by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), the IATF-MEID’s 10-day hotel-based quarantine policy causes distress and undue financial burden on the Returning Overseas Filipinos, since they have to pay for their 10-day hotel quarantine fees, of which the money could have been used for other necessary purposes," the resolution added.