The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority is supporting the move prohibiting dine-in services in canteens and smoking in workplaces in the areas under the modified enhanced community quarantine or MECQ to further contain the spread of the coronavirus disease.
MMDA chairman Danilo Lim said these additional health protocols jointly crafted by the Department of Health, Department of Labor and Employment and Department of Trade and Industry, was a most welcome development and must be strictly followed for everybody’s safety.
The government is now prohibiting dine-in operations in canteens, allowing only food deliveries. The common smoking areas are also banned while the individual smoking areas or booths in the open spaces are allowed.
"Each of us must do our part in our fight against COVID-19. Adhering to the most basic health protocols is already a big contribution. Let us all cooperate as the pandemic is not over yet,” Lim said.
He says the MMDA, through its own COVID-19 committee, has formulated and implemented internal guidelines to help fight the spread of COVID-19 among its personnel. Those include the prohibition of eating together of employees and limiting food-delivery couriers and riders to the building lobby, among other things.
Moreover, the agency has no smoking area inside its premises.
Loida Alzona, Director of the MMDA’s Health and Environmental Protection Office, said that, in collaboration with the local government units, the agency's environmental enforcers were strictly monitoring the selling of cigarettes and other tobacco products within a 100-meter perimeter in the schools in Metro Manila.
“Despite the existence of the COVID-19 pandemic, we continuously conduct the online training of LGU environmental enforcers and the members of the Local Tobacco Control Councils to intensify the implementation of anti-smoking ordinances in their respective areas of jurisdiction,” Alzona said.