BECAUSE of the slow-paced inoculation of A4 or economic frontliners, business process management (BPM) players are now thinking of procuring their own vaccines.
But even with this idea, Buddy Villasis, executive director of the Cebu IT BPM Organization (CIB.O), said the long and tedious process of procurement left them with no choice but to wait patiently for the confirmation from the local government unit’s vaccination drive.
“Some companies are even thinking of procuring their own vaccines. But as you may be aware, vaccine procurement is a long, tedious and bureaucratic process,” he said.
The industry, he noted, is calling on the government to fast-track the inoculation of the A4 category, under which workers from the information technology-business process management (ICT-BPM) sector fall.
“The mall in Cebu I.T. Park has been identified to handle inoculations as already approved by the Cebu City’s vaccine task force. But issues such as lack of vaccines, manpower, logistics etc. kept hounding us,” he said.
Villasis noted that workers who registered for vaccination since June haven’t received feedback as to when they will get vaccinated. CIB.O has no exact figures yet as to the percentage of IT-BPM companies whose workers have been vaccinated.
“It’s a matter of logistics and vaccine availability. Those who were not able to avail themselves of the corporate registrations via Project Balik Buhay have individually registered at the city’s pabakunata.com,” he said.
Winner sector
The IT-BPM sector has been one of the winner sectors since the Covid-19 pandemic erupted last year. Though operating in a hybrid format, the industry has been hiring employees amid the stressed business environment.
Non-sensitive operations/tasks, such as customer service relation, basic voice services, tech support services, coding, programming and transcriptions are generally and continuously handled by employees on a work-from-home setup.
Accounts with security sensitive components/services are all handled on-site. These are knowledge process outsourcing/clinical process outsourcing such as direct client transactions handling credit cards, medical claims, insurance, bank accounts among other confidential information. (JOB)