Despite welcoming Malacañang’s decision to extend the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), the country’s most restrictive lockdown measure to address the surging COVID-19 cases, Vice President Leni Robredo on Sunday, April 4, said that the plan to give P1,000 in-kind assistance to individuals affected by the lockdown was not enough.

“May ibibigay na ayuda pero tingin natin napakaliit kasi iyong ayudang ibibigay ay 1000 na in-kind. Iyong 1,000 parang equivalent siya sa ilang araw ng trabaho lang. So, ito ang problema natin sa extension ng ECQ (There’s going to be an aid but we think it is very small because it’s going to be P1,000 in-kind. The P1,000 is only equivalent to some days of work. So, this is our problem with the ECQ extension),” she explained over dzXL. 

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque announced on Saturday night, after a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on COVID-19 Response, that President Duterte approved the recommendation to extend the ECQ until April 11. 

The ECQ is imposed on National Capital Region Plus (NCR Plus), which also includes the provinces of Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna, and Cavite. It was supposed to end on April 4, but health experts recommended to the IATF to extend it for another week.

On Friday, April 2, the Philippines logged its highest COVID-19 cases with 15,310.

The vice president agreed with the extension of the ECQ because it will restrict the people’s mobility, which will also reduce the chances of transmission. 

“Kasi pwede sa iba wala naman yun one week, wala naman iyong two weeks pero meron tayong mga kababayan na kung hindi magtatrabaho ng isang araw, wala ding sweldo. So, sa akin, dapat kapag everytime mag-e-ECQ tayo yun tutukan natin papaano iyong mga walang isusuwedo, paano kung wala namang savings (For others, the one week or two weeks ECQ are negligible but we have fellowmen who if they don’t work for a day, they don’t get paid, too. So, for me, every time we will impose ECQ, we need to focus on the people who will lose their salary and who have no savings),” she said. 

This is the problem with extending ECQ, the opposition leader added. 

Meanwhile, she also found lacking the government’s new prevent, detect, isolation, treat, reintegration (PDITR) strategy and said that it should set a scorecard and timelines to achieve more good results. 

“You said PDITR, how is this different from the past? It’s just a name. The scorecard should be very specific,” Robredo said in Filipino. 

The country followed a test, trace, isolate, and treat strategy since last year, but it has never done mass free testing to prevent community transmission. 

“When you said that the plan is PDITR, how is this different from the strategy last year that we’re already doing? For me, the suggestion is for it to have an objective, there should be a scorecard. Everything that we’re doing should have timelines and scorecard,” the vice president explained. 

If the government will extend the ECQ for another week, then what does it want to achieve by April 11?, Robredo asked. 

“For me, what they said about ECQ is okay, but we’re hoping for more details and we will always operate with specific objectives. Because if not, how can we say we’ve succeeded? How can we say that we’re excellent? Were we able to check our scorecards?,” she said.