The government will roll out a Safety Seal Certification Program for business establishments in the early first quarter of 2021, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Alexei Nograles said on Wednesday.

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 (IATF).

“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 on Wednesday.

He added the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Department of Health (DOH), the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Department of Tourism, and the Department of Transportation will be crafting 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,” Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said in the same virtual briefing.

The program will be called “Safe Dito,” he added.

The trade chief said local government units (LGUs) will be responsible for issuing the Safety Seal certification to the establishments in their jurisdictions.

LGUs will also perform regular audits in firms with the certification ensuring 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 also reiterated the need for establishments to adopt the StaySafe PH system as their contact tracing platform, which 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, which 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. CURRENTPH