Recto: Time to expand IATF, put new man in ‘driver’s seat’

MANILA, Philippines— Even Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto believes that it is now time to “expand” the membership of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases and put a new man in the driver’s seat.

“Hindi lang change oil, change engine and driver na rin,” Recto said in a statement on Tuesday.

(Let’s not just change oil, but we also  have to change the  engine and  the driver as well.)

“COVID is fast and furious while the vaccine rollout is slow and sputtering. These are signs of a government’s pandemic machinery in trouble and a nation in danger,” he stressed.

Some of his colleagues have already called for the IATF to be abolished or reformed in light of the troubling increase in COVID-19 cases in the country.

READ: Abolish IATF, let health experts lead pandemic response – senator

But Malacanang quickly dismissed the calls.

READ: Palace nixes calls for IATF abolition, says not its fault that coronavirus is mutating

Recto underscored the importance of developing a “better” machine if the same problems— apparently referring to the pandemic—persist or appeared to have worsened a year after.

“It is time to expand the membership of IATF, to include those in private business with superb managerial skills, such as those who have been running companies with a million moving parts with efficiency and precision,” he said.

He explained that under Executive Order No. 168 that created the task force, its leadership would still be an all-government affair chaired by the Secretary of Health with several government agencies’ heads as members.

“Secretaries Duque and Galvez can remain within the IATF, but with new roles,” Recto said, referring to Health Secretary Francisco Duque, chairman of  IATF, and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez.

The two, he said, could be “one of the pistons of a new, smarter engine that will have more cylinders, but no longer its ECU, its computer brain.”

“Having reinforced the IATF, it is time to put a new man [in] the driver’s seat, Recto said. “But even the best car, more so the one that will bring us out of this crisis, cannot run on autopilot.”

The senator lamented that the private sector has no permanent seat on the table even in the National Task Force for COVID-19.

“There should be a stronger Malacañang team that will direct the war against COVID round-the-clock, whose diagnostic equipment is plugged into the nation’s COVID fighting machine so that adjustments are made and trouble fixed in real-time,” Recto also said.

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