Sugar stakeholders urged to set up emergency protocols vs. coronavirus

By Dolly Yasa

BACOLOD City – Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) Board Member Dino Yulo urged planters’ groups and sugar mills to set up emergency protocols for the coronavirus disease or COVID-19 pandemic.

Yulo said they are following up reports that a sugar mill in Luzon was placed on lockdown for possible contamination.

“We need to put preventive measures in place to avoid any scenario related to the spread of the virus, especially as we are still at the height of the milling season,” Yulo said adding that if such will happen, “we know that the local government or the health department can impose mandatory quarantine and even shutdown a mill.”

Yulo said he is calling on the planters’ groups and the mills to “take care of your workers, and educate your drivers to follow the necessary protocols.”

Among his recommendations to the sugar mills are disinfection of trucks by spraying or through tire baths, footbaths for those who really need to go into the mills and a non-contact system so that drivers do not have to get down from their trucks anymore.

Yulo said it might be prudent for the mills to emulate what the hospitals are doing at this time by “setting up a system of several responders,” wherein when the first group of workers need to be quarantined “you still have a second line of workers on standby and so on, so that operations are not hampered.”

Yulo also said that during this crisis, the need to advocate among the worker and other industry stakeholders is necessary.

“We have to help each other out. We need our industry to survive these trying times. We need cooperation and prayers,” he said.