LOCAL government units should be given the authority to decide when to allow schools to resume classes, the Philippine Business for Education said on Tuesday.

PBEd President Chito Salazar said LGUs know best the situation on the ground.

“The situation and condition on the ground are different, depending on the province, municipality, town. We should empower the local governments to make decisions regarding the opening of classes and how they should be run depending on their context,” Salazar said.

“In a pandemic where travel, communications and all of these things are restricted, it gets even more difficult for the central government to make decisions for the entire country in a timely and appropriate fashion,” he added.

PBEd Chairman Ramon del Rosario Jr., meanwhile, said physical classes can resume in areas that have zero Covid19 cases.

“Why not start, at the very least, with opening up face-to-face classes more aggressively in those areas?” Del Rosario said.

President Rodrigo Duterte had said that it is too risky to hold face-to-face classes because of the threat of the Delta variant of Covid19 which is more transmissible.