The BPO Association of Davao Inc., (BPOADI) has started inoculation of call center agents in Davao City on Wednesday at Felcris Centrale.
Xavier Eric Manalastas, president of BPOADI, told Edge Davao the inoculation will be conducted in tranches. For the first tranche, the group is aiming to vaccinate 500 workers a day for a total of 1,500.
“There will be more tranches coming. What we are doing is, we agreed with the city government of Davao that we will organize it, we will provide the facility, we will work together with different companies and all of us participate as volunteers to implement the project. The city government provides the Sinovac vaccine for the employees,” he said.
Manalastas said the group is eyeing to vaccinate 25,000 employees registered in the participating BPO companies that include BPO Solutions, VXI, Flatworld, Awesome OS, Concentrix, and OpenAccess BPO.
“The target is 25,000 call center agents for all the companies participated, right now ang nakapag register sa atin online ay nasa 20,000,” he said.
The BPO sector is identified by the city government with high cases of Covid-19. In fact, some BPO companies were placed under lockdown last month by the city government of Davao.
Manalastas said the sector is now closely coordinating with the city and see to it that as soon as possible BPO companies will resume operations so that employment and income of the employees will not be affected.
“The BPO industry has the most stringent policy and protocols among private enterprises patterned to international standards. Kaya lang when you have a community transmission and people bring this to the workplace that is how it spread. Eventually it spread in the workplace, but its common factor of people not telling the truth and sad to say, most of BPO workers are working in an enclosed environment, which may have contributed to the spread,” he added.
