Brigadier General Charito “Ching” Plaza, PEZA director general, reads out her letter request to Presidential Assistant to the Visayas, Secretary Michael Lloyd Dino, for employees of economic zones in the Visayas to be included in the PBB vaccination program. | Photo Courtesy of OPAV
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Employees in the economic zones in the Visayas will now be covered under the Project Balik Buhay (PBB) vaccination allocations.
In a recent statement, Secretary Michael Lloyd Dino, presidential assistant for the Visayas, said that through the PBB, the inoculation of the vaccines to the workers or employees of the different economic zones under the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) will be hastened.
The Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas (OPAV) responded to the request of Brigadier General Charito “Ching” Plaza, Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) director general, to help employees of economic zones to get vaccinated.
Plaza visited Secretary Dino in Cebu City last May 31, 2021, to personally hand over her letter request.
In her letter, Plaza stated that there are a total of 265,797 ecozone workers in the Visayas.
“We have a total of 769 locator enterprises, with 51 locator enterprises in Region VI, 704 in Region VII, and 14 in Region VIII,” read the letter of Plaza.
Central Visayas has the largest number of ecozone workers with a total number of 221,374 direct workers; followed by 38,270 employees in Western Visayas and 6,153 in Eastern Visayas for a total of 265,797 in the entire group of islands.
“It is high time that we pay back our investors (with) a post-pandemic economic relief recovery platform,” said Plaza.
Dino said the Central Visayas-based PBB would share its best practices to other regions in the Visayas especially to the private sectors.
The PBB will partner with the different chambers of commerce in the Visayas for the vaccination plan of ecozone employees.
They will try to replicate the PBB’s role in the vaccination program, spearheading the distribution of vaccines to the private sectors, to other regions.
As of today, PBB has 12 vaccination sites in Cebu with different hospitals and private partners. Their biggest vaccination site is located at the IEC Convention Center in Cebu City.
Dino said that partnering with the private sector in inoculating their employees would help fast-track the vaccination program of the national government.
“We will definitely replicate what PBB is doing now in Cebu to achieve our 100 percent goal in vaccinating every person in the COVID-19 vaccine master list in the Visayas,” he said.
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