No to new workplace rules, PCCI tells gov’t

The country’s largest business group has urged the Duterte administration to refrain from imposing additional burdensome requirements for the workplace, at least until the economy recovers from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry noted that some of the rules of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) were “impractical.”

“For instance, mandating the use of face shields for workers, the observance of 2-meter physical distancing and the designation of an isolation area of one room for every 200 employees, is simply not realistic in a production-line setting,” said Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) president Benedicto Yujuico earlier.

Increased support

For the government to stop issuing new workplace requirements was one of the resolutions presented by PCCI during this year’s Philippine Business Conference (PBC), during which PCCI also called for increased government support to help businesses cope with the mounting pressures of the public health crisis.

“For both the national and local governments to refrain from issuing and imposing new requirements to corporations or individuals until the recovery of the economy to pre-COVID19 numbers,” PCCI said.

Enunina Mangio, chair of the 46th PBC, said on Thursday that their resolutions “contain doable recommendations,” which focused on three main objectives—to get longer lasting fiscal and nonfiscal incentives, to digitize both government procedures and company operations, and to give input subsidies to agriculture and aquaculture sectors.

“For [the] Dole [Department of Labor and Employment] and other concerned government agencies to continue the wage subsidy program for existing companies for a longer period deemed applicable,” read one of the resolutions.

They also asked the Department of Finance, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Bankers Association of the Philippines and the Department of Trade and Industry to adopt financial measures that would that would directly address the needs of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises during the pandemic.

Consultations

“These resolutions are a product of tedious, extensive, comprehensive and multistakeholder consultations with PCCI’s vast network of over a hundred local chambers through our five Area Business Conferences, over a hundred industry associations, 30 bilateral trade councils, friends and allies from the joint foreign chambers, and PCCI’s standing committees,” Mangio said.