Mayor Labella: ‘Business is hurting in Cebu City’

POLICE PRESENCE An armored personnel carrier of the police’s Special Action Force moves around Cebu City to remind residents to stay home as the government addresses the rising cases of COVID-19 in the city. —NESTLE SEMILLA

MANILA, Philippines — Businesses in Cebu City are “hurting” amid the imposition of enhanced community quarantine in the area to curtail the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019, its mayor said on Thursday.

“Business is hurting in Cebu City. To mention tourism, it is the gateway to other tourist destinations in the Visayas,” Mayor Edgardo Labella said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel.

Labella said that the collected real property and business taxes alone in the city have gone low since the strict quarantine was implemented.

“Ordinarily, every day, by way of real property and business taxes, we collect between P10 and 12 million per day. During the lean months, we collect P7 million by way of business and real property taxes,” he said.

“But now under this pandemic, sad to say we collect only, it’s good if we can collect P100,000 or a little over P100,000 per day,” the mayor added.

The implementation of ECQ in the city has been extended until July 15 due to the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the area.

But despite this extension of ECQ, the mayor touted the city’s recovery rate, which he said is even higher than the average recovery rate on the nationwide scale.

He said that of the 5,596 positive cases of COVID-19 in the city, a total of 2,897 patients have already recovered from the illness.

Labella also said that the city is deploying 80 teams of contact tracers to track persons who have come in close contact with coronavirus disease 2019 patients, in a bid to expand the contact tracing capacity of the city.

/MUF