Bohol Island News Staff | Posted on April 24, 2020
Bohol Governor Arthur Yap has signed the executive order that now places measures should the provincial government would start to accept returning Boholano overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
In a virtual presser this afternoon, the governor highlighted the top two requirements prior to their entry to the province.
A returning Boholano OFW must undergo rapid testing for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and should possess a certification from the Department of Health (DOH) on the completion of the 14-day quarantine period.
However, he emphasized that they will still be again subjected to confirmatory testing and quarantine once they arrived here.
They will be temporarily staying inside the central quarantine facility identified by the provincial government for the confirmatory testing and quarantine.
Yap said this will be done in batches. He didn’t specify as to how many individuals will be accommodated per batch.
Once the first batch of OFWs will complete their quarantine and will be cleared, this will be the time they will accept another batch of returning OFWs.
“Our aim is to have the capacity to attend to patients. This is the reason why we need to have them returned by batches,” he said in the local dialect.
There are 81 Boholano OFWs who are set to return to the province, according to the data provided to the provincial government by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).
Once OWWA will give a go signal, Yap said they will facilitate their return.
There are already 18 OFWs who are now in Cebu that are also now ready to go back to Bohol this week or next week, Yap added. They are waiting for the go signal from OWWA on their return.
Bohol has been under community quarantine for six weeks now and under enhanced community quarantine for four weeks.
Yap said the number of persons under monitoring (PUMs) in the province has gone down to 54, as of today.
