By Marie Tonette Marticio TACLOBAN - In order to encourage people arriving from Metro Manila and other areas with positive cases of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) to report to barangays here and undergo the mandatory 14-day home-quarantine, the local government of Arteche, Eastern Samar will be providing them with food packs that would last for the duration of their isolation. Mayor Roland Boie Evardone shared that their barangay health emergency response teams (BHERT) would visit the patients under monitoring (PUMs), instead of requiring the PUMs to report to the barangays. "A father who arrived from Manila with his three children was crying because he said they would have nothing to eat if he will not work so we decided to come up with this initiative," Evardone narrated. The mayor, who is a nurse by profession, noted that he felt that it was his moral obligation to personally explain to his constituents the importance of self-quarantine and the practice of social distancing. "I appeal to them to strictly follow the protocol not because we said so, but because they care about their own lives and their love ones," he said. He personally leads house visitations of 72 PUMs to distribute food packs that contain five kilos of rice, six 3-in-1 coffee packs, five canned goods and five packs of noodles. The mayor disclosed that they were able to purchase the goods under the town’s calamity fund. He said that they will be distributing the relief packs every three days, and would provide the PUMs temporary employment if they would be displaced from their jobs in Metro Manila after the quarantine period.