City imposes no cap visitors; slowly opens bus routes

Mayor Benjamin Magalong said that since the Summer Capital’s coronavirus disease 2019 alert level status was lowered to level 2 in February,  the city government has not imposed a cap on the number of visitors in order to determine its threshold on tourist arrivals without sacrificing the welfare of residents and visitors alike.      

The IATF has currently designated the city to an even lower alert level 1 from March 1 to 15.       

He said several parameters were defined to establish the threshold including manageability of traffic; manageability of people especially in places where there are convergence like markets and malls; air quality and crowd counting that could be monitored in real time by the city’s Smart City System.     

“This is already the concept of our recovery.  We will again engage with the private and business sectors for us to be able to create that enabling environment. We need to help them recover as we transition to the ‘new normal’”, the Mayor said.     

He, however, cautioned residents and visitors to not be complacent and continue to strictly observe minimum public health standards like wearing face masks and practicing good physical hygiene.    

The Mayor also pointed out that even if alert level 1 allows 100 percent capacity in establishments, this  will be slowly implemented in the city in the next few days.      

As to the matter of  inter-regional transportation, the Mayor said he has already talked with the LTFRB and that all the city has to do is to endorse the requests of the bus companies.

“We have again endorsed another bus company to open their routes to Regions 2 and 3. So tuloy-tuloy pero dahan-dahan at hindi natin pwedeng biglain lahat.  But definitely, we are going to favorably endorse all the routes to the LTFRB,” he said. – Gaby B. Keith