Guv touts ‘new normal’ rehab plan

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

 

Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor Jr. on Thursday touted the three focus areas of his economic recovery plan.

The plan is embodied in Executive Order (EO) No. 183 or the Plan for Rehabilitation And Transformation of the Province of Iloilo to Catalyze Recovery (Plan RT-PCR).

Defensor said the plan has three focus areas – healthcare system, psychosocial support, and local economy in the “new normal” when the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is under control.

Plan RT-PCR, which was unveiled on August 17, reiterates provisions under Executive Order No. 128, as amended, on the Modified General Community Quarantine (MGCQ).

It also introduced new provisions such as:

-Reverse Isolation;

-Reverse Contact Tracing;

-expanding Mandatory Testing for COVID-19;

-establish a Health Care System (HCS) that is transformed, reoriented and strengthened for effective response to COVID-19, through a sustained supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and testing kits for readiness to augment Rural Health Units (RHUs), and upgrading the personnel, infrastructure, facilities and equipment of the Iloilo Provincial Hospital and District Hospitals for strengthened COVID-19 response;

 -Implementing a program for the rehabilitation and recovery of the local economy, by boosting agriculture and fishery and stimulating trade and the services industry, and;

 -Implementing a program to promote and protect the psychosocial welfare of the people, through a psychosocial response known as Project PRIME (Program for the Resilience of Iloilo in Mind and Emotion), providing Psychosocial Support (PSS), administering Psychological First Aid (PFA), and conducting Psycho-Social Processing.

The programs are anchored on the fact that the province has lost more than P22 billion to the pandemic.

Based on the EO, the losses are in the following areas:

-tourism – P2,692,885,705.20

-business/trade – P6,936,466,220.55

-agriculture – P119,642,082.25

-transport – P191,799,464.55

-employment – P6,292,628,475

-remittances from overseas workers – P380,700,000

-information technology – P2,550,000,000

-airline industry – P2,389,200,000

Defensor sought to provide clarity to the goals and the policies prescribed by the new EO in a press conference on Thursday.

The governor explained that the new EO is a compilation of previous plans already being implemented, mixed with programs and projects which were already planned but adjusted to focus on COVID-19 responses.

“Our departments, especially our Finance, together with our Provincial Planning and Development Office, already developed what we call a rehabilitation and recovery program. These are new interventions which we can do, which is already focused on trying to fix the damage that has been caused to us by COVID-19.  The other side of it is that, we already have ongoing programs which are part of our Annual Investment Plan and our [annual] budget which we can refocus so that it will serve the objectives of the economic situation created by COVID-19. We have ongoing programs which will be given a different direction so that it will be COVID-specific,” he said.

He said that Plan RT-PCR was institutionalized to build confidence among the residents of the province through the intersection of the three focus areas.

“The Plan RT-PCR has three areas: the healthcare system, which is meant to build confidence to face the new normal, and if you’ll put it together with the psychosocial program, our people who have been affected by this, they can be made better contributors to fixing the local economy. In more practical terms, we wish to instil in the province that this is the new normal and we will learn to live with the problem.

He further clarified that the new EO is complementary to the MGCQ EO, for the province to be able to transition to the new normal.

“If we do it, we have people circulation. You need people circulation so that you will move the economy. MGCQ is really a regime of community quarantine measures that are designed for transition to the new normal. EO 183 is not just an MGCQ EO. It has many components now because we really want to make it a transition to the new normal. It is rehabilitation because we have programs to fix the damage, it is transformation because you want to reorient and refocus existing programs so it could be COVID-19 response-specific,” he said.