Photo by Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News
In a bid to increase its surveillance capacity for Covid 19, the Department of the Interior and Local Government XII has started with the recruitment process of contact tracers as the Region battles the most recent spike in infections due to confirmed local transmission.
In a radio interview on Tuesday, Director Josephine Cabrido-Leysa, CESO III called on applicants who meet the minimum qualification standard such as having a Bachelor’s Degree relevant to the job, with preferred experience on any of the following:
- being an allied medical professional like a nurse, or at least a graduate or an undergraduate of an allied medical course
- must be skilled in data gathering and or assisted in research and documentation
- must be able to interview Covid 19 cases and close contacts in order to gather data on travel history and conduct health assessment
- must possess the ability to advocate public health education messages
- have investigative capability
“If you noticed sa mga media posts, there is no training or eligibility required since our Department, along with the Local Government Academy, will provide the necessary training for these Contact Tracers (CTs)” Dir. Leysa said.
“These contact tracers will serve as members of the Contact Tracing Teams (CTT) for four months. In our Region, we were originally allocated 1451 slots for contract tracers but we haggled a bit para madagdagan ito especially for our present situation na mayroon na tayong local transmission. Well, finally, just over the weekend, we were informed that an additional fifty slots were opened. All in all, we will be hiring 1501 contact tracers.”
Dir. Leysa clarified further that the Department will give priority to its own contract of service personnel, whose contracts have not been renewed or have been affected by the budget realignments due to Covid 19. “We have to single out this issue on prioritization kasi nga we are looking for a way to help our qualified kababayans, through the hiring of contact tracers (CTs). Included in the list, among others, are “returning Overseas Filipino Workers who are now unemployed, terminated local company workers, displaced workers both from the formal or informal sector, from existing networks of barangay health workers, parent-leaders from 4Ps, members of duly accredited CSOs by National and those from high risk areas. Pati na rin yung mga dating volunteers natin” the Director said.
There are also other factors to consider in the hiring of contract tracers, Dir. Leysa explained, such as the population size and the number of active cases in an area. “The Province of South Cotabato has the most number of contract tracer allocation due to the high number of active cases. In fact, we are about to hire 469 CTs for South Cotabato since our province has 180 active cases as I speak. Meanwhile, we need 401 for the Province of Cotabato, 201 for Sarangani, 231 for Sultan Kudarat, 136 for Gen. Santos City and 52 for Cotabato City,” Dir. Leysa stated.
Applicants need only to submit their Letter of Intent, along with their PDS or Resume, Police Clearance (while waiting for their NBI Clearance) and drug test result to their local DILG offices.
