The government will roll out a Safety Seal Certification Program in business establishments in the early first quarter of 2021, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Alexei Nograles said yesterday.
Nograles said the ‘Safety Seal’ will serve as a proof that a certain establishment is complying with the safety and health protocols of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“We want to assure the public, those who can go out, that they can go out safely in areas with safety seal establishments,” he said during the first Economic Development Cluster briefing of the Presidential Communications Operations Office Global Media Affairs.
He added the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Health, Department of the Interior and Local Government, Tourism, and the Department of Transportation will craft a joint memorandum circular for the certification program.
“This program aims to increase the confidence of the general public in going out and patronizing establishments that have stringent health and safety as well as contact tracing protocols in place required by the IATF,” DTI Secretary Ramon Lopez said in the virtual briefing.
The program will be called ‘Safe Dito,’ he added.
He said LGUs will be responsible in issuing the ‘Safety Seal’ certification to establishments in their jurisdictions.
The LGUs will also perform regular audits of firms with the certification, to ensure that they continue adhering to the required safety protocols.
‘Safety Seal’ certificates of establishments that failed to maintain the required safety and health standards will be revoked, and will be reissued once they comply with the protocols.
“The IATF strongly encourages the LGUs to mandate establishments to apply for a ‘Safety Seal’ certification to provide their constituents with ‘certified safe’ places to visit and patronize,” Lopez said.
Lopez reiterated the need for establishments to adopt the StaySafe PH system as their contact tracing platform, that is one of the requirements for them to acquire the ‘Safety Seal’.
They can also integrate their current contact tracing platform to the StaySafe PH, that is the only contact tracing platform that is synced with the DOH’s Covid-Kaya system. To date, there are over 40,000 establishments nationwide that have adopted the StaySafe PH platform.*PNA
