The DepEd main office in Pasig City will put all employees in work from home status in order to continue operations as sanitation and COVID-19 contract tracing goes on.
Work from home
A five-day lockdown was implemented in the Department of Education’s main office at Pasig City as part of the mandatory guidelines when a certain number of recorded suspected cases of COVID-19 showed up in any government facility within the period of 14 days. The National Action Plan is part of the containment strategy to zone out localized cases. The office was automatically sanitized and all workers are set on work from home status.
The DepEd confirmed that two of the suspected cases on the record were exposed to another DepEd personnel who recently died from the COVID-19. The employees are now in quarantine and contact tracing has been done for all possible individuals they came in contact with.
Atty. Domingo Alidon of the DepEd National Employees Union is asking for a mandatory 14-day lockdown instead of five days. However, the department is still considering the request, depending on how wide the coverage will be for the contact tracing of the suspected cases within the main office.
The department assured its employees that salaries and benefits for all personnel, teaching and non-teaching will be updated diligently. A P500 daily hazard pay allowance shall also be credited to employees from areas under ECQ and MECQ that physically reported to their respective offices
As of now, the department has yet to properly issue an actual headcount of the number of employees who tested positive for COVID-19. Progressive groups are already pressuring the agency to come up with an official statement, for the sake of peace of mind of its employees.
*ECQ- Enhanced Community Quarantine
*MECQ- Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine
