ILOILO City – Four employees of a BPO firm in Mandurriao district contracted coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
These four employees included three call center agents on work-from-home arrangement and an onsite agency personnel, a source told Panay News.
One of the call center agents had exposure to a family member who tested positive for COVID-19, the sourced added.
While the company’s management has yet to issue an official statement, Mayor Jerry Treñas confirmed these COVID-19 cases on Thursday.
He said it was on July 24 when the City Health Office (CHO) informed the call center that some of its employees got infected.
On the same day, Treñas ordered the CHO to conduct COVID-19 testing of personnel who may have come in contact with those infected employees, but were not initially allowed.
“To set the record straight, Friday last week, we informed the BPO [company] that they should start testing their employees with the help of our city health,” Treñas said.
The call center management, according to Treñas, finally allowed CHO personnel to conduct testing on July 30, but only for a limited number of its employees.
“It was only in the morning of July 30 that they allowed our city health office to start conducting swab testing. To my surprise, they allowed us to swab a few of their agents,” Treñas lamented.
He urged the management to cooperate and be transparent.
“Our priority is the lives of the people, that is why we need to move fast to stop the spread of the virus,” Treñas reiterated.
On Thursday, he convened with the management of other call centers or business process outsourcing (BPO) companies in this city to ask for their cooperation if similar incidents will occur in the future.
“We are talking about the lives of the people. I humbly ask everyone to cooperate with us,” Treñas appealed./PN
