Barangay workers who perform frontline services for their communities are essential workers, too.
This point was reiterated by Deputy Speaker Benny Abante Jr., who in a March 25 letter to National Task Force Chief Implementer Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr. urged the government to include barangay kagawads, tanods, and Sangguniang Kabataan officials in the A4 vaccination priority group given the services they provide for their respective barangays.
So far only members of Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams (BHERTs), barangay officials 60 and older, and barangay workers with comorbidities have been included in priority groups.
Stressing that these barangay personnel are frontliners in the barangay who are constantly at risk of contracting COVID, Abante explained that barangay workers “help and assist local health officers in tracking and monitoring COVID patients, deliver ayuda house to house, assist and facilitate hospitalization of COVID cases in the barangays when needed, and work at night to implement curfew as per IATG guidelines.”
“I believe these officials are also essential workers and immediate responders who deserve to be included in the A4 Priority Group.”
So far only members of Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams (BHERTs), barangay officials 60 and older, and barangay workers with comorbidities have been included in priority groups.
In March, local government units (LGU) officials were also moved up in the government’s vaccine priority list as they were classified as essential workers.
The lawmaker lamented that barangay officials and workers not only perform the tasks of essential workers in their barangays, they do so with little or no remuneration.
“The least we can do to repay them for their selfless service is to protect them through vaccination.”
According to the solon, they face the dangers of the virus in daily public service, but “many of these workers are volunteers and are only given honorariums.”
“The least we can do to repay them for their selfless service,” said Abante, “is to protect them through vaccination.”