‘Grocery stores, banks should have flexibility’

With people packing up stores to get some basic necessities within the 6am to 1pm time frame, a growing clamor in the community to adjust the work hours are reaching more and more lawmakers.

Rep. Tina Sablan (Ind-Saipan), stressing the importance of “flattening the curve,” has joined her colleagues—House minority leader Edwin K. Propst (Ind-Saipan) and Rep. Luis John DLG Castro (R-Saipan)—to call on Gov. Ralph DLG Torres to amend the directive concerning business hours.

The governor ordered the hours when businesses are open to the general public be reduced as a COVID-19 preventive measure. Many businesses throughout the CNMI have been implementing the executive order since Tuesday. It is among the many actions currently the government is implementing to ensure that the novel coronavirus threat is mitigated on the island, especially with the reported positive cases in Guam.

“Immediate and aggressive action is smart now because tests are in short supply, and with cases rising in neighboring Guam, it’s safer at this point to assume that COVID-19 is already in the CNMI as well. We are so vulnerable here and it’s crucial that we pull together as a community to do everything we can in the time that we have to ‘flatten the curve’ and slow the spread,” she said.

Sablan appealed, however, the restriction in the hours of operations of essential businesses, like grocery stores and banks, be amended as soon as possible, stating that the policy promotes crowding, and fosters hoarding and panic buying.

“It threatens to reverse all the progress we may have made through the other smart, proactive social distancing and quarantining measures and public outreach that have been carried out thus far,” she said.

The legislator said the flexibility Torres has given to gas stations to determine their business hours should also be extended to grocery stores, “where people go, every day, to buy basic life necessities like food, water, cleaning and hygiene supplies, and over-the-counter medication.”

Sablan further stated that banks should be able to determine their own hours, as people regularly go to these facilities to access money, pay bills, and make essential purchases.

“People need food, water, medicine, and money as much as they need gas, clean laundry, and running water. …In this rapidly evolving COVID-19 world, drastic measures must be taken quickly to protect public health, and they must also be changed quickly if they prove to be counterproductive,” she added.