Anxiety grips fruit vendor as she is forced to shutter stall

CLOSED For the first time in 20 years, Jaqueline Petalcorin has to close down her fruit stand on Colon Street in downtown Cebu City for a month while the city is in total lockdown starting at noon of March 28. Her problem now is where to get the money to feed her family of seven. —DALE G. ISRAEL

CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines — Street vendor Jaqueline Petalcorin was in a quandary: She did not know where to get food supply once it would run 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.

With Cebu City implemen­ting an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), 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 began enforcing its ECQ on Saturday as a measure against the spread of the coronavirus disease, 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 only one person to go out to buy basic necessities.

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

Long lines

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 were 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, Cebu City, including her children and grandchildren.

Cebu City Mayor Edgar Labella has assured that an initial aid of five kilos of rice and other goods would be delivered to each affected household through their respective barangays.

But Petalcorin said she has sent her son to check at their barangay hall if the food packs have arrived but nothing was available yet.

Once the quarantine would be lifted, the Petalcorins would have to face another problem: where to get the money to buy the fruits to sell since she would have used up their capital by then to sustain her family’s needs.