Poor Cebuanos worry for their survival when quarantine is enforced

For the first time in 20 years, Jaqueline Petalcorin will have to close down her fruit stand on Colon Street, in downtown Cebu City for a month while Cebu City is under enhanced community quarantine. Her problem now is where to get the money to feed her family of seven. Photo by Dale Israel, Inquirer Visayas

CEBU CITY –– Street vendor Jaqueline Petalcorin is in a quandary: She does not know where to get food once her supply runs out in five days.

Petalcorin, 55, and her family were dependent on a fruit stand she had been running at the back of a mall on Colon Street in downtown Cebu City for more than 20 years.

When Cebu City starts implementing the enhanced community quarantine on Saturday, she and the other vendors have to close down their stores and stay home.

“I don’t know what we will do. I get a headache every time I think that I cannot open my store for a month. How will we eat?” she said in Cebuano.

Cebu City was set to implement its enhanced community quarantine on March 28 as a measure against COVID-19.

For one month, strict home quarantine would be implemented while public transportation would be suspended. A quarantine pass would be given to each household to allow one person to go out to buy necessities.

All establishments in Cebu City would be closed except those that cater to essential needs like hospitals, gasoline stations, banks, groceries, pharmacies, water stations, among others.

Although there was still no COVID-19 positive case in Cebu City, the Department of Health in Central Visayas was waiting for confirmatory tests from the Research Institute of Tropical Medicine for 15 “presumptive positive” cases that were tested earlier at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center.

But hours before the implementation, long lines could be seen outside the Automatic Teller Machines outlets and groceries. Even the stocks of rice in the public market almost ran out.

Barangay halls had been swamped with calls from Cebuanos asking how to get the quarantine cards.

Petalcorin said she was able to buy a few packs of noodles, half a kilo of dried fish, five kilos of rice, five canned sardines and one tray of eggs using the money she earned on Thursday.

She said these were only good for five days since there were six people in her home in Barangay Mambaling, including her children and grandchildren.

But City Mayor Edgar Labella assured the residents that an initial aid of five kilos of rice and other goods would be given to each household affected by the enhanced community quarantine, which would be delivered through their barangays.

But Petalcorin said she had yet to receive the aid promised by the city government.

She said she asked her son to check constantly at the barangay hall if the food packs had arrived.

Once the quarantine is lifted, the Petalcorins expect another problem: where to get the money to buy fruits to sell since she would have to use their capital during the period they would not be selling.

Edited by LZB