The city hall building of General Santos (PNA GenSan photo)
GENERAL SANTOS CITY – The city government launched on Wednesday another round of surprise inspection on business establishments here to determine their compliance with health standards and other control measures against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
Geraldine Zamora, head of the city permits and licensing division, told reporters the move aims to check and identify business that are not properly implementing the health protocols and those that complied.
She specifically cited the measures set by the Department of Health and adopted by the local government through the executive orders issued by Mayor Ronnel Rivera.
These include the wearing of face masks and face shields by employees and customers of the establishments, observance of the one-meter physical distancing, temperature checks and disinfection measures, she said.
Zamora said the establishments should have set up by now their own monitoring teams and posted information materials on Covid-19 measures.
“We already informed them about these in the past months through a series of engagements and it’s now time to check if they complied with them or not,” she said.
The official businesses that have fully complied with the measures will be issued with gold badges that will be installed in their entrances.
Establishments that already adopted the prescribed measures but still lack full compliance will be given blue badges while those that did not do anything will be marked or posted with red badges, Zamora said.
She said they are waiting for the release of another executive order from the mayor that will provide for the appropriate sanctions against the erring businesses.
Zamora said they decided to launch the inspections due to the continuing increase in local transmission of Covid-19 in the area.
She said they coordinated the initiative with the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Trade and Industry.
A number of business establishments, among them a major shopping mall and banks, as well as private and government offices here have recorded cases of Covid-19 in the past months among their workers.
On Tuesday night, the city recorded its 1,000th Covid-19 case but 793 or 79 percent of the patients have fully recovered.
The City Health Office said most of the 167 active patients have either mild symptoms or asymptomatic and expected to recover. (PNA)
