BACOLOD City Mayor EvelioLeonardia has ordered the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to implement a vaccination program for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) employees who are on graveyard shift.

"I know how important is our BPO industry to the economic life of the city, that is why we are planning to target evening and graveyard shift call center agents," Leonardia said in a statement.

The graveyard shift vaccination drive of EOC will start this week and the onsite vaccination of the various call center employees and personnel will be from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Leonardia said the hands of BPO personnel are tied to their job which is why the City Government will come to them.

"We saw their enthusiasm to get vaccinated so we will go out of our way to serve those working the night shift in different BPO firms," he said.

The mayor noted that this is yet another part of his administration's commitment to inoculate as many Bacolodnons as possible.

"Our goal is to make the vaccination program more accessible to everyone so we can achieve herd immunity and eradicate Covid-19 as fast as possible," he said.

"We are happy that our VAX-I program was widely accepted by our vendors. We thought there will be resistance or the people will be unaware of it but the people were open to the vaccines and we were able to inoculate more than 400 vendors in one day," he added.

The City Government earlier started the VAX-I (mobile vaccination clinic) that targets to inoculate workers, like vendors and public transport drivers, who are unable to leave work for a day to go to the vaccination centers.

On August 15, the city also started the "Drive-Thru" vaccination at 5th Level Parking Area of the Ayala Malls Capitol Central.

EOC records showed that from March 5 to August 15, EOC-Task Force and the Covid-19 Vaccination Council (CoVaC) already inoculated a total of 180, 045 individuals.

Of the number, 79, 656 persons already received their second doses of Covid-19 vaccines.