The Department of Finance and its attached agencies and state corporations may soon return to work normally in their respective offices after more than a year of shifting to work-from-home arrangements because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, in a recent executive committee meeting, ordered the DOF, its attached agencies and state corporations to prepare their respective plans on transitioning work back to their respective office, with strict adherence to health and safety protocols.
“I think that we should already have a plan for transitioning back into working normally. In other words, back-to-office work,” Dominguez said during the meeting.
“I’d like everybody to start working on this plan already assuming that we’re going to have to live with this virus,” he said.
Dominguez said as more government employees get fully vaccinated, the DOF and its agencies such as the Bureau of Customs, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Bureau of Local Government Finance and the Bureau of the Treasury, Insurance Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission and other attached organizations should gradually shift to working normally in their respective offices.
He said the transition plans 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.
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.
About 76.6 percent of DOF’s employees were fully vaccinated as of Oct. 8.
