Finance secretary Carlos Dominguez has ordered the Department of Finance (DOF) and its attached agencies and state corporations to prepare their respective back-to-office transition plans, after a year and a half of work-from-home arrangements due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Dominguez said in a statement yesterday as more government employees get fully vaccinated, the DOF and its agencies such as the Bureaus of Customs, of Internal Revenue, of Local Government Finance and of the Treasury; Insurance Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, and other attached organizations should gradually shift to working normally in their respective offices.
In the DOF, 76.6 percent of its employees have been fully- vaccinated as of October 8.
The transition plans, Dominguez said, should include testing protocols for employees and their immediate families, and seminars to educate them on how to return safely to full-time office work.
“We should already have a plan for transitioning back into working normally. In other words, back-to-office work,” Dominguez said during a recent executive committee meeting for other attached agencies and state-run corporations under the DOF.
The Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases has yet to allow the full transition to back-to-office arrangements with the National Capital Region, now under General Community Quarantine with Alert Level 3 status. – Angela Celis
