Berjaya Makati Hotel Statement
January 6, 2022

The order by the Makati City Hall closing down Berjaya Makati Hotel’s operations based on the suspension order issued by the Department of Tourism is without legal basis.

For one, the DOT order is not yet final as the hotel will appeal it within the fifteen-day period it is given. Meanwhile, the suspension is not in effect. Secondly, there is no law that penalizes a hotel for not reporting a guest who jumps quarantine. There is nothing in R.A. 13322 that is applicable to the hotel. Thirdly, we must be accorded due process and be allowed to explain before any penalty is imposed. We have not been given our day in court by the Makati City Hall.

On the operations level, if we close down the hotel immediately, where do we send the 150 or so quarantine guests we have at the moment?

The whole country is on war footing in effect against the pandemic. Every quarantine hotel, just like ours, serves a strategic purpose especially with the lack of rooms while the virus rampages throughout. To close down a quarantine hotel for no legal reason is to close down a hospital just when it is helping to win the war. There is no benefit to be gained by such regulatory posturing when national interest and public health are on the line.

Berjaya press release sent to my mailbox today

One selfish/entitled act of one affects everybody. This Gwyneth Chua has wreaked havoc on a lot of businesses and families. The people whom she infected have reached La Union and have affected a restaurant that was forced to close down. (No Omicron in La Union despite Chua contact testing positive)

There are stories floating around about her parents bribing staff of the hotel so she can skip quarantine (ugh! Parents condoning selfish acts!) but are not proven.

“In fact, her friends asked why she was already out partying, instead of being in quarantine [in Berjaya Hotel], and she claimed to have ‘connections’,” according to Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat in an interview with this paper. She identified a bar in Poblacion, Makati, popular among millennials, as one of the venues where Chua allegedly partied with friends.”

Business Mirror

This is the problem with the third-world country like the Philippines: the small fry with money can behave like they own the country. Such small-town thinking.

So now we’re grappling with several thousands of daily cases again. I don’t know how long we can wait for the kids can get vaccinated before omicron gets us again.

I have already signed up for my girls’ vaccination and hopefully they can get the first dose before the month ends.

We just logged 17,220 new cases today with a positivity rate of almost 37%. Sigh. Here we go again.

We’re so tired of this. There should be vaccine equality now worldwide or else we will battling this virus longer than we should.

Elsewhere in the world, Japan to declare quasi-state of emergency amid rising COVID cases while EU daily virus cases top 1 million for first time.