Go Negosyo, business groups to help Cebu
PRESIDENTIAL Adviser for Entrepreneurship and Go Negosyo founder Jose Maria Concepcion 3rd and the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) on Tuesday vowed to help Cebu fight the surge of Coronavirus disease cases.
In a private meeting with the business community, Concepcion vowed that the Go Negosyo Project ARK would help and support the province in fighting the pandemic.
Present in the virtual meeting were Chief Implementor of National Policy on Covid- 1Y Carlito Galvez Jr., Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Roy Cimatu, CCCI President Felix Tagium and Go Negosyo mentor and CCCI past president Virgilio Espeleta.
House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, ARK Project Lead Josephine Romero, Wilcon Depot Founder and Chairman Emeritus William Belo, Aboitiz Equity Ventures President and Chief Executive Officer Sabin Aboitiz, LT Group President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Tan, PCCI Chairman Emeritus George Barcelon, FilIndian Chambers of Commerce Chairman Rex Daryanani and members of CCCI also attended the meeting.
“Controlling the health situation well will allow us to control and avoid letting go of people and save jobs and livelihood especially for the MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) who are struggling right now. Cebu will definitely rise above this challenge,” Concepcion said.
“The private sector will really work with different chambers. We will help support whatever programs the chamber has. We will work with the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases) and the approach is mutual trust and cooperation. Our goal is to save as many lives as possible and sustain the jobs and livelihoods of our people,” he added.
Project ARK will tap CCCI, Mandaue Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and other business chambers in Cebu to help curb the spread of the disease.
Galvez said the private sector and the government should work together to help stop the spread of the disease in Cebu.
“We want to mobilize all the support like what we did in Manila. We have created a lot of quarantine areas, and centers. We also call for support to boost the morale of the front liners and or warriors fighting every day, provide frontliners relief from months of exposure, encouraging messages, small amenities to give relief, expand quarantine areas, boost testing capacity to quickly identify asymptomatics. In all this, we need people’s self-awareness and discipline to protect themselves and the people around them,” he added.
Some measures to be taken are the setting up of dialysis centers inside malls to protect renal patients.
ARK-PCR Private Chief Implementor Jannette Garin said an expanded pooled testing in Cebu could also be explored.
“We will test 10,000 individuals in Cebu in partnership with our partner-hospitals. We can move forward after the proposal that we’re going to discuss tomorrow. The business sector can handle that moving forward,” she continued.
Presidential Assistant for Visayas Michael Dino said they could also set up a private sectorled fund to increase the salaries of healthcare workers.
“Maybe we can have this Bayanihan fund [where] we can give P5,000 each [to] frontliners each month. We can boost their morale to show that we really care. Without our frontliners, I don’t think we can fight this pandemic. This shows them that we, businessmen, care,” he said.
Cebu was earlier declared as an emerging hotspot of the coronavirus disease 201Y (Covid-1Y) because of the rising number of Covid cases.
“It is critical that we test, trace, and treat. Project ARK has taken the steps to boost testing, while the government has made great strides, under the leadership of Sec. Galvez, to construct more Covid- 1Y facilities. On contact tracing, a study estimates that we can reduce the need for testing by a factor of 10, and this has also been relayed to Congress,” Concepcion said.