Over 265,000 PEZA employees to get vax thru OPAV, PBB

MINERVA BC NEWMAN

CEBU CITY – Over 265,000 employees of economic zones in the Visayas can get the COVID-19 vaccines through the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas (OPAV) in partnership with Project Balik Buhay (PBB).

Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) Director General B/Gen. Charito Plaza, in her letter request to OPAV that she personally handed to OPAV secretary Michael Dino on May 31 said that there are 265,797 ecozone workers in the Visayas that needed be vaccinated.

Plaza said that there are 769 locator enterprises with 51 locator enterprises in Region 6; 704 in Region 7 and 14 in Region 8.  Central Visayas has the largest number of ecozone employees with 221,374 direct workers; Western Visayas with 38,270 employees and 6,153 in Eastern Visayas.

"It is high time that we pay back our investors a post-pandemic economic relief recovery platform," Plaza added.

Dino said that OPAV through PBB will share best practices with the help of the private sectors in the three Visayas regions and that they will partner with the different chambers of commerce in the Visayas for the vaccination plan of ecozone employees.

Dino explained that partnering with the private sector in inoculating their employees will 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% goal in vaccinating every person in the COVID-19 vaccine master list in the Visayas," he said.

The national government has started inoculating those included in the A4 priority list. The list includes essential workers or private employees required to physically report to work, employees in the government, and workers in the informal sectors.

Currently, the focus of the A4 cluster is only in Metro Cebu in the Visayas. (Photos: Google Images)