Pilmico adapts to ‘new normal’
Pilmico Foods Corporation, Aboitiz group’s food and integrated agribusiness unit, have offered free shuttle services to transport workers that are essential for their on-site operations. For those who are not required to go to the office, Work-From-Home (WFH) arrangements have been made available.
According to Tristan Aboitiz, President and CEO of Pilmico, safety continues to be their number one priority. “We can assure our personnel, clients, and suppliers that, in the crucial period after the lifting of Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ), we will continue prioritizing everyone’s safety, while making quality products consistently accessible,” he said in a statement.
Pilmico, like many of the essential services that operated during the ECQ, will continue to enforce the safety protocols they have had in place, such as providing Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) and sanitation products for on-site personnel.
Only essential personnel will be allowed inside the buildings and/or facilities, so no visitors will be allowed in order to minimize the number of people in each facility. Deliveries to-and-from the business will also be done quite differently, following social distancing and contactless protocols.
Following the protocol they utilized during the ECQ, correspondences with customers, suppliers, and other entities will be done mostly online.
Pilmico is now implementing flexible return to work arrangements for those who need to report onsite. For the majority of Pilmico’s employees, they will continue existing work from home setup to reduce potential risk to everyone.
SM donates test kits to Las Piñas City

Davao boosts daily COVID-19 testing capacity
Davao City is set to increase its daily testing capacity for COVID-19 by 1,000 tests with the help of medical equipment donated recently to the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) by Ayala Foundation.
An automated RNA Extraction machine and 2 RT-PCR machines and their accessories were received by officials of the SPMC Davao.
The SPMC donation is one of other similar initiatives that seek to capacitate existing testing facilities and build testing laboratories in different parts of the country. Ayala, through Ayala Land and AC Health, are constructing testing labs in Bulacan, Batangas, Laguna, and Iloilo.
Together, the Ayala group’s various contributions to Project T3 (test, trace, treat) will boost the country’s daily testing capacity by 5,500. At present, the country conducts about 34,000 tests daily.
SMC extends fuel support to medical workers
San Miguel Corp. has extended its free fuel support to the government’s ‘Libreng Sakay’ program past the modified enhanced community quarantine period, or up to June 15, bringing its total fuel donation for the benefit of medical front liners to P6.2 million.
Prior to the announcement of the extension of fuel subsidy, SMC, through SMC Infrastructure and Petron Corporation, recently donated an additional 45,000 liters of fuel for the use of DOTR shuttle buses, with the total fuel donated so far at 180,000 liters.
“Apart from the fuel for shuttle buses, we continue to support our brave medical front liners through our many initiatives. We will continue to support our front liners at this critical time, any way we can,” said Ramon Ang, SMC president and chief operating officer.
SMC, through SMC Infrastructure, has also waived toll fees worth P11 million for medical front liners who travelled through the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR), South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), the Skyway System, NAIA Expressway (NAIAX), and the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEX) during the enhanced community quarantine.
SMC had set aside P500 million to donate life-saving medical equipment to various government hospitals nationwide, including eight sets of Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) testing and RNA machines. It has also donated testing kits equivalent to 54,000 tests.
As of May 12, the company had donated a total of 1,222,490 liters of ethyl alcohol worth P91.8 million to 3,549 hospitals, non-government organizations and government agencies. Disinfectant powder worth P15.37 million was also sent to various health facilities.
Kimberly-Clark donation
Kimberly-Clark Philippines Inc. (KCPI) has donated over P3.2 million worth of its products across non-profit organizations and hospitals/treatment centers across the country since the initial outbreak of the virus, donating 200,000 Huggies diapers, 200,000 Kotex feminine pads, and 20,000 Joy Bathroom tissue rolls.
The company has delivered over a hundred thousand packs of Huggies diapers, Kotex feminine pads, and Kleenex facial tissues combined, among others, to 39 hospitals across the country.
The company also donated to Frontline Feeders PH, a group providing for the needs of frontline healthcare workers in public hospitals.
The donations were specifically directed to both hospital frontline health care workers and the most vulnerable patients, particularly new mothers and their babies.
KCPI also extended its donation drive to non-profit organizations catering to different communities afflicted by the pandemic. Most notably, they recently donated products to the We Heal as One Center, a joint project of Ayala Foundation and ICCP Group Foundation Inc that converted the World Trade Center into a 500-bed COVID-19 quarantine facility. The organization also donated to the needs of underserved communities, such as marginalized families, street dwellers, blue-collar workers, and urban poor women were also addressed through KCPI’s donations to the following groups: Power in Her Story, I Support the Girls, and Project SMILE. Extending its support to more communities, the organization also donated personal hygiene essentials to key foundations such as ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation and GMA Kapuso Foundation.
Operation Smile offers ‘comm boards,’ teletherapy services
One of the problems hospitals face in the battle against COVID-19 is the difficulty in communicating with patients especially those who are intubated.
The speech-language pathology volunteers of Operation Smile Philippines (OSP) in partnership with the Speech-language pathologist of Cebu (SOC), and Siwala Pampangueña, followed the lead of the Philippine Association of Speech Pathologists – Alternative Augmentative Communication Special Interest Group (PASP AAC-SIG) and came up with a speech communication board for the medical staff and the COVID-19 patients.
This way, the medical front liners can exchange messages with the patient and properly assist them on their needs.
Operation Smile, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing comprehensive care to children and young adults with cleft lip and cleft palate deformities, shifted its efforts towards frontliners and COVID-19 patients as the world deals with the pandemic.
Communication Boards or “comm boards” are picture-laden boards featuring functional words used by individuals who have difficulty speaking because of physical limitations. The boards have words such as ”pain,” “yes/no,” “hungry,”
The speech pathology volunteers from Cebu, Davao, Pampanga, and Manila have distributed over 300 kits of communication boards to a number of hospitals such as Chinese General Hospital and Sta. Ana Hospital in Metro Manila; Cebu Doctors University Hospital, Cebu North General Hospital, Cebu South General Hospital, Mactan Doctors Hospital, Cebu Velez General Hospital, Chong Hua Hospital-Fuente, Chong Hua Hospital-Mandaue, Perpetual Succor Hospital, University of Cebu Medical Center, Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center and ARC Hospital in Cebu; Southern Philippines Medical Center, Davao Regional Medical Center, Integrated Provincial Hospital Office in Maguindanao, Cotabato Regional and Medical Center and the Metro Dave Medical and Research Center in Mindanao; and also at Western Visayas Medical Center in Iloilo.
In addition to the comm board efforts, OSP’s speech pathology volunteers also launched Teletherapy to provide essential speech therapy services to children and adults with communication difficulties such as cleft lip and palate, aphasia and language disorders. The volunteers are using various internet and media platforms and apps to engage patients in speech activities just like how they would do it during face-to-face sessions.
With the help of technology and internet connectivity in the age of social distancing, Teletherapy is gaining ground as an alternative mode of intervention for many children and adults with speech difficulties.