Tap sari-sari stores, closed restaurants to ensure food supply – lawmakers

MANILA, Philippines — From using the kitchen of temporarily closed restaurants and fast-food chains to avail of food to allowing sari-sari stores to open to give residents affected by the Luzon-wide “enhanced community quarantine” access to food.

These were some suggestions raised Friday by two lawmakers as the nation is confronted with challenges to deal with COVID-19, including ensuring that citizens would not go starving while the region is on a 30-day lockdown to prevent the transmission of the highly-infectious respiratory illness.

Senator Aquilino Pimentel, in a message to reporters, suggested that sari-sari stores should be allowed to be open so that residents who live far away from grocery stores or supermarkets would still be able to purchase necessary items and food supplies.

“Since open ang markets and groceries pero walang (public) transpo available for those far from these places, (in) effect naging sari-sari store din ang mga ito para sa mga malapit sa lugar,” Pimentel said.

(Since markets and groceries are opened but there is no public transportation available for those far from these places, in effect it becomes a sort of a sari-sari store to those who live nearby those places).

“Hence, we (should) allow real sari-sari stores to open to serve their immediate communities just (in) case nandun na rin ang kailangan ng consumer (it already has what the consumers need),” he added.

Meanwhile, Bagong Henerasyon Party List Rep. Bernadette Herrera said local government units (LGUs) and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases’ (IATF-EID) technical working group should partner with restaurants or fast food chains in preparing and purchasing food that would be distributed to barangays.

“Marami sa mga restaurant ang napilitang magsara pansamantala habang nasa ilalim ng enhanced community quarantine ang buong Luzon (A lot of restaurants were forced to temporarily close under the enhanced security quarantine imposed in the entire Luzon). Maybe it is high time we use the commissary and kitchen of the different restaurants and fast-food chains. They currently have food stocks that might just go stale since no customers come to them,” Herrera said.

“Why don’t LGUs and IATF partner with restaurants in their respective cities and buy their food at cost, which they can distribute to the poorest communities,” she added.

Herrera pointed out that if LGUs purchase food from these restaurants and fast-food chains, the continuous supply of food would be ascertained.

“The question of sanitation of food packs will be diminished, and we are helping the private sector at the same time,” she said.

Herrera added that IATF can instruct LGUs to use their disaster and discretionary funds for the food purchases under emergency conditions.

The country is currently  under a state of calamity with an enhanced community quarantine imposed in Luzon.

As of Thursday, the DOH reported 217 cases of COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus that first emerged in China’s city of Wuhan in Hubei province in late 2019.

The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses named the novel coronavirus as SARS-CoV-2.

The virus causes mild symptoms such as fever and cough for most people but can cause serious illness such as pneumonia for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems.

Coronavirus is a family of viruses, which surfaces have a crown-like appearance.

KGA