Food, Jobs, Health Learn Important Lessons From COVID 19 Pandemic

Yesterday, I joined Presidential Candidate Panfilo Lacson, Vice Presidential Candidate Vicente Sotto III and fellow Senate aspirant Dr. Minguita Padilla in a virtual press conference via ZOOM participated in by members of the Senate media.

When I was given the time to present my thoughts on the current national and political issues, I emphasized that while the COVID 19 is the hottest campaign topic, our leaders should profoundly look into the lessons that the pandemic brought to fore.

The COVID 19 Pandemic, while indeed a serious problem which must be addressed, is temporary and the moment a cure is discovered by scientists, it would soon be just like Influenza or Paneumonia.

While government is addressing the problems resulting from the Pandemic, our leaders should also look at the very important lessons learned.

I shared the information that there was a study funded by the United Nations Development Fund on the request of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) which I headed at the time which looked into the effect of the pandemic on the lives and outlook of our people.

There were three things people were really concerned about:

Food. In the early months of the Pandemic, the movement of people and goods was disrupted because of the quarantine protocols. it was a scary moment for our people because a big volume of our food supplies are either imported or sourced from the different islands of the country

Jobs. The crippling effect of the pandemic on the world economy, led to the closure of my work places rendering thousands jobless, especially our OFWs;

Health Security. In spite of the fact that there is already a universal health coverage for our people, victims of COVID 19 Pandemic found themselves having to pay hundreds of thousands in excess billings. There were also reports of hospitals taking advantage of the crisis by declaring every respiratory related disease as COVID 19 to be able to collect more.

A pandemic similar to COVID 19, I said, could hit the country or the world again and it is important that instead of being preoccupied with the temporary issues of vaccination and quarantine protocols, our leaders should look at the lessons learned.

These were my recommendations:

For food, we must strive to produce enough for our people. We cannot depend on importation because the countries from which we source our food from may opt not to sell when there would be a worldwide shortage;

For jobs, government must provide support to local industries, like reviving the steel industry in Mindanao, supporting small companies and cooperatives in starting industries to provide jobs for our people and build an inclusive economy. While we indeed benefit from the remittances of our OFWs, the pandemic taught us that they too could lose their jobs and once the remittances dwindle, it could affect the national economy;

For health security, there is a need for our leaders to seriously review our health care and insurance system in the country, plug the holes which allow corruption and ensure that when the next pandemic hits us, our people do not have to worry about their hospital expenses.

All of these lessons should be the basis of future policies and legislations that our officials would introduce.

#GovernanceIsCommonSense!

#LearningLessonsFromCrisis!

(This video clip was spliced from the lengthy press conference held by Partido Reporma yesterday.)