Duron’s defense of drivers penalized for not wearing masks

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“After all it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.”—Margaret Chan

 

ILOILO City drivers penalized by the Land Transportation Office (LTO) with “reckless driving” offenses for non-wearing of face masks and shields have found an ally in Iloilo City Councilor Rommel Duron.

Duron, a lawyer and former official of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) regional office, considers it as “illegal” to criminally penalize drivers with such violations, according to Hilways News, an Iloilo news website maintained by our colleague and Public Mirror publisher Jerry Taclino.

Hilways News quoted Duron as saying that “enforcers could not as well use the anti-drunk driving law to penalize drivers for failure to comply with a circular from the Land Transportation Office.”

“This is ignorance of law kag kon sigehon nila file-lan ta sila kaso (We will sue them if they continue to do this),” Duron warned LTO enforcers, as reported by Hilway News.

As chair of the City Council Committee on Transportation, Duron plans to call for a public hearing with LTO officials as resource persons to clarify issues on violation and penalty, according to Hilways News.

In the same report, Duron was said to have disclosed that Councilor Lyndon Acap had earlier filed a resolution in their recent regular session calling for a response to concerns raised by public utility drivers.

This was after reports came to their attention that “even the private vehicle drivers were not spared from similar apprehension by LTO enforcers.”

 

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Duron’s reaction came a week after the national government ordered people to wear face shields in addition to masks at work and on public transport beginning August 15 “in order to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.”

The policy affects drivers and passengers on public transport as well as all employees at their workplace.

According to a message signed by the Department of Labour and the Department of Trade and Industry, “face shields and masks should always be worn together when interacting with colleagues, clients and/or visitors.”

The circular added: “Face shields may be removed according to the demands of the work or when the occupational safety and health of the employees so requires.”

Public vehicles would be in breach of their franchise if they allowed passengers without wearing face shields on top of the masks, said the Department of Transportation.

It reported further that the additional protocol was imposed after the Department of Health noted that people leaving their homes to work was causing a lot of new infections.

 

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BY the time we have “recovered” from the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), it would be election day in the Philippines, if Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization (WHO) is to be believed.

Ghebreyesus recently predicted coronavirus could be over within two years or in 2022, the year the Filipinos will elect the successor of President Rodrigo R. Duterte.

If this is the scenario, Filipinos will have to spend 2021 fending off the pandemic and scrutinizing the characters who will woo their votes in the 2022 presidential polls.

We agree with Ghebreyesus though that current advances in technology could enable the world to halt the virus “in a shorter time”.

“Of course with more connectiveness, the virus has a better chance of spreading,” he explained.”But at the same time, we have also the technology to stop it, and the knowledge to stop it,” he noted, stressing the importance of “national unity, global solidarity”.

The WHO bigwig cited the Spanish flu of 1918, which had taken two years to overcome and killed at least 50 million people worldwide.

Coronavirus has so far killed 800,000 people. Nearly 23 million infections have been recorded but the number of people who have actually had the virus is thought to be much higher due to inadequate testing and asymptomatic cases.

 

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