GenSan City shuts down airport, ports, businesses to curb COVID-19 spread

GENERAL SANTOS CITY –– Mayor Ronnel Rivera on Monday ordered the closure of the General Santos City Airport and seaport here as part of several other measures aimed at preventing the spread of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) into the country’s tuna capital.

The order takes effect on March 17, a day after President Duterte placed the entire island of Luzon under an “enhanced community quarantine” and giving local officials the go-signal to “implement laws and what is needed to make their respective places livable.”

Rivera also ordered the temporary shutdown of several business establishments in connection with the threat of COVID-19.

The establishments ordered temporarily closed were mostly recreational facilities, like bingo and bowling centers, bars, cockpits, cinemas, and arcade shops.

Any of these establishments found violating the order would have their permits permanently canceled, Rivera said.

Rivera said he ordered the City Permits and Licensing Office to suspend the business permits of these establishments and ensure compliance. The city will announce when it will resume business operations.

But the order to close the airport, known among aviators here as Tambler airport, only covers passenger flights. Rivera said cargo and supply flights would continue.

The move of the city mayor affects Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific, which operate several regular daily flights from the airport here to Manila, Cebu, and Iloilo.

Rivera also prohibited the “disembarkation and embarkation of sea vessel crews” at the Makar Wharf run by the Philippine Ports Authority and the General Santos City Fish Port Complex. The order covers other privately operated ports.

Foreign and domestic fishing vessels regularly call at the fish port complex here, the country’s second-largest, to unload their fish and tuna catches.

Rivera’s order only prohibited the crews from going offshore and not the unloading of vessel cargoes.

The Philippine Fishing Development Authority, which operates the fish port, reported total fish landings of 247,637.20 metric tons in 2018, up by 17 percent from 2017 figures.

In a separate order by the city mayor, the elderly, minors, the pregnant, and those considered high-risk and vulnerable for COVID-19 were discouraged from going to public places.

“The business sector has our way of dealing with situations like this. We face challenges just like when we have to face opportunities. Business must go on as there are workers who depend on it,” Elmer Catulpos, president of the General Santos City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc.

“We hope to be able to place (losses) at the very minimal without sacrificing our manpower and their health,” Catulpas added.

As this developed, bus operators here noted a 50-per cent decline in the number of passengers, mostly traveling from here to Davao City, which was reported to be in a semi-lockdown.

A supervisor of Yellow Bus Lines at the Bulaong Bus terminal here noted a 30 to 50-percent decrease in the number of passengers.

Ramie Fajardo, dispatcher of Mindanao Star bus plying the Davao-Gensan-Davao route, said their buses were now leaving the terminal with only eight to ten passengers, down from the average 40 passengers on regular days.

“We were expecting an influx (over the weekend) but there are just a few. Sana hindi ito magtagal (I hope this does not last long),” he said.

He was worried about how the company would pay their wages if the situation persisted.

On Sunday, local authorities started enforcing a 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew, among other measures, to control the flow of people into this city.

Several malls in the city also announced they were cutting short operating hours by two hours.

KCC Mall said their doors would be closed at 8 p.m.

The city mayor told residents it would be best to avoid “non-essential movement and mass gatherings” to prevent a potential spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19.

Police and military checkpoints around the city on Saturday started implementing certain protocols, including the filling up of declaration forms requiring commuters and motorists to state their destinations and travel origin.

Data gathered from this would be put in a data bank for easy contact-tracing should there be a need to do so, said Dr. Lalaine Calonzo of the City Health Office./lzb