As the number of Covid-19 confirmed cases is increasing in the Philippines the government has extended the community quarantine until the 30th april 2020 for the entire Luzon. It's a critical decision to prevent mass gatherings which will prevent any further spread of viruses. Although it was announced that the government has allotted about 300B pesos funds to support the affected regions that are unable to sustain their needs using the local government funds it was mentioned that it will not be enough.
The government is calling for support from large companies to join the government to support the needs of the localities. There was no mention of pledges from any of the NGOs or private companies yet.
In the current community quarantine that was initially set to a period of 1 month. It was realized that the majority of the low income population were not prepared for this pandemic. And the support from the government is badly needed. I've been hearing from the news that low income localities are struggling to make it through the day. They are the families whose income earners have to work in order to survive for the day. They didn't have savings or insurance to cover for their living in the situation that we are having right now.
Aside from the low income families, the majority of small businesses are also affected. Especially those that rely from tourism and food related activities. Since day 1 of the community quarantine, we decided to temporarily close our business to prevent any further burn in funds. As we depend on tourists that visit our city, we have to make the hard decision to put our operation on halt. We believe that it's best to cease the operation in order to prevent unnecessary burn.
What I'm worried about is the time that we reopen. There will be an adjustment period for us, our employees, and our customers as well. It took us long enough to acquire our customer base and we will have to work harder to acquire them back.
It's going to be a tough time for us.
