THERE is no need for cops to be assigned at quarantine hotels to ensure guests are following mandatory quarantine procedures upon their arrival from abroad.
In a delayed telecast of President Duterte’s Talk to the People on January 4, Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra said hotels are required under Republic Act (RA) 11332, the law on Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases, to cooperate in implementing the quarantine. “So these entities, Mr. President, may include establishments, which are charged with a duty, for example, as a quarantine hotel, to ensure that people who are quarantined within the establishment should not be able to jump the quarantine regulations.”
He added, “The hotel management can devise ways of preventing without appropriate [cause], perhaps by demanding certain proof of the need [for the quarantined guest] to go out, like for emergency reasons to see a doctor or something like that.
“But otherwise, if they will be leaving the premises of the hotel without any justifiable reason or not for any emergency reason, then I believe, Mr. President, that they should not be allowed to exit the hotel, and hotel personnel may be able to do that also, in my opinion,” asserted Guevarra. “Supposedly there are personnel in the hotel who man the entrance and the exit of the hotels,” he pointed out.
The matter was discussed on air following reports of returning Filipinos skipping their mandatory quarantine.
The Department of Tourism (DOT) on Tuesday fined Berjaya Makati Hotel P13,200 and ordered the suspension of its accreditation and certification as a multi-use hotel for three months. It has 15 days to appeal the order. (See, “Berjaya Hotel gets slap on the first for letting ‘Poblacion Girl’ skip quarantine,” in the BusinessMirror, January 5, 2022.)
In his Talk to the People, Duterte had asked Interior Secretary Eduardo M. Año if it was possible to assign two cops to man each quarantine hotel in Metro Manila. Año said he had already spoken with Gen. Dionardo Bernardo Carlos, chief of the Philippine National Police, about it. There are 455 DOT-accredited quarantine hotels in Metro Manila, as per the Bureau of Quarantine (BOQ).
Earlier, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat said she had asked Año and the BOQ to conduct surprise inspections at quarantine hotels to ensure guests were indeed in their rooms.
The DOT recently uncovered cases of returning Filipinos skipping their mandatory quarantine and hotels selling “absentee-quarantine” packages. In one case, Gwyneth Anne Chua aka “Poblacion Girl,” was even fetched by her father from the quarantine hotel, Berjaya Hotel, shortly after arriving from the US. The next day, she was seen partying at a bar in Makati.
In another case, a woman who also arrived from the US, failed to show up at the quarantine hotel, Seda Residences Makati, and went home to her condo. (See, “Returning Pinoy skips quarantine, gets massage at her home instead,” in the BusinessMirror, January 3, 2022.)