‘Closure of Iloilo borders will kill Panay economy’

“When trying to teach someone a boundary, they learn less from the enforcement of the boundary and more from the way the boundary was established.”

—Bryant H. McGill

By Alex P. Vidal

A FILIPINO-American national from Lambunao, Iloilo has decried the order to restrict or close the Iloilo borders, saying “it will kill the economy in Panay Island.”

New York-based Rommel Leal, 50, an entrepreneur and travel enthusiast, said if Iloilo borders are closed, other provinces in Panay dependent on Iloilo economy like Antique, Aklan, Capiz, and Guimaras “would be the hardest hit if their goods, manpower, and other components of economic activity can’t reach Iloilo vice versa.”

Leal said he received feedbacks from relatives and traders that “actually only the roads have been closed.”

“There are still access entry areas in far flung villages away from the national roads in the Iloilo and Capiz boundary that aren’t monitored by authorities,” he said.  

Leal said he found it “unnecessary” to restrict movements from Iloilo to other provinces “because Panay is one island and all its provinces don’t have direct road access to other islands.”

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It’s impossible for COVID-19 infected residents from Cebu and other islands to enter Iloilo unless they will arrive via vessels in the sea ports, said Leal, a resident of the United States since 2008.

Leal sympathized with Antique in particular because the province, he said, “relies on Iloilo as the gateway for their goods and workers to other provinces vice versa.”

“I pity Governor (Rhodora) Cadiao who had to make a public appeal to the provincial government of Iloilo not to implement a strict border restrictions,” observed Leal. “It (closure of Iloilo borders) will add misery to the Antiquenos who were already badly affected by the long lockdown.” 

Iloilo Governor Arthur “Toto” Defensor Jr signed an executive order dated July 1, 2020 restricting persons from traveling to the province from July 1 to 15, thus closing the Iloilo borders.

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Only the following are exempted from Defensor’s travel ban:

-Government officials and personnel traveling in the performance of their functions;

-Health and emergency frontline frontline personnel and duly athorized Humanitarian Assistance Actors (HAAs);

-Persons traveling for medical or humanitarian; 

-Persons granted passage to the airport for travel abroad or from the airport to the border;

-Overseas Filipino workers (OWs) returning to the province in tripsl orgnaized by Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA); and 

-residents of Iloilo and Guimaras.

As of this writing, Aklan and Capiz reportedly also ordered the closure of their borders.

Leal also suggested to authorities to life the lockdown imposed on St. Paul’s Hospital in Iloilo City after eight residents doctors had been reported infected with COVID-19.

“There are so many hospitals in the world today where hundreds of health workers have been infected buy they were not ordered lockdown. Hospitals are essential places in the time of pandemic. They should be opened and be made accessible to everyone,” he concluded. 

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NOT all of the 98 people, including village officials in Western Visayas, charged by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group–Region 6 (CIDG-6) recently over alleged irregularities in the distribution of the government’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP), pocketed the money intended for the poorest of the poor.

Some of them were charged criminally for abuse of authority and harassment of their political nemesis who reside in their villages. 

But CIDG-6 Director, Lieutenant Colonel Gervacio Balmaceda Jr., has confirmed that some of those facing criminal cases have been the objects of allegations they included friends and relatives ineligible in the SAP’s first tranche.

Village officials who stole the SAP intended for their residents will only have themselves to blame once the criminal raps will progress in court.

Pocketing the money intended for those already suffering from virus-induced lockdown was tantamount to adding insult to the residents’ injury.

Many families until now don’t have enough food to eat for their daily sustenance because most of their breadwinners had been stranded in the house for at least three months.

Some of these breadwinners lost their jobs and will never regain them due to so many restrictions and unpredictable economic doldrums that developed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

 (The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)