Subic Bay Freeport—Buwelo BPO Solutions, the call center operator in this Freeport which made news recently when 25 of its employees tested positive for Covid-19, has pledged to implement more measures to keep the virus at bay.
Pointing out that transmission has been contained within the identified cluster of workers who are already quarantined, Kevin Charles, the firm’s chief operating officer, said in a statement Friday that they will implement “localized lockdowns” that would involve staggered partial closure of offices in the firm’s three-level business process outsourcing (BPO) facility at the Subic Gateway Park here.
Buwelo will also allow some of its more than 700 workers temporary work-from-home arrangements to further minimize health risks, and undertake top-to-bottom disinfection of company premises.
As of Friday, Charles said 26 Buwelo employees have been confirmed to be infected with the virus out of the 65 that previous contact-tracing had identified to have been possibly exposed.
Of the 26 confirmed cases, only 21 remain active, he said, as three have already completed the 14-day quarantine period while two have taken repeat swabs which yielded negative results.
Charles also said 37 of the 65 workers under quarantine have tested negative outright. Among these are three positive cases that cannot be linked to the positive clusters in the company, he added.
The company CEO said it was unfortunate that some Buwelo employees got infected, as the firm has been dutifully meeting all requirements of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease, the Department of Health, and other concerned government agencies.
“This is one thing that we have been fervently praying not to happen all throughout these months since the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Charles said. “Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, we have implemented stringent measures to keep our workplaces safe.”
In an interview with local radio stations on Saturday, Buwelo operations manager Peter Liwanag said health protocols were already in place at the company since the pandemic broke out.
He said Buwelo offices are equipped with an advanced ozone-generator system to purify air in work areas, and that plastic barriers have been installed to isolate individual workstations even as their call center agents are now seated one workstation apart.
He added that the firm has hand sanitizers and temperature scanning at facility entrance, and that the firm regularly released information on Covid-19 safety protocols to its employees.
Despite keeping the virus at bay for 8 months, Charles said Covid-19 was able to penetrate the workplace when some employees did not report their health condition and went to work even when they were already exhibiting mild Covid-19 symptoms.
He added that two workers who attended parties in Olongapo and Zambales, which health officials said are the likely source of exposure, did not also inform the company about the gatherings they joined.
“We did all that should be done within the bounds of our employer-employee relationship. But (there is a) boundary between our business relationship and their private lives,” Charles said.
To further help affected employees, Charles said the company provided shouldered half of the cost of their swab tests and also paid the salary of all employees who were advised to undergo quarantine.
Charles also reiterated the company’s commitment to the safety and the well-being of its employees and expressed the Buwelo management’s appreciation to the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority for its handling of the Covid-19 cases in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone.