Garment sector asks gov't to include factory workers in A4 vaccination group

The Confederation of Wearable Exporters of the Philippines (CONWEP) on Wednesday appealed to the government to include their factory workers in the A4 vaccination priority group.

“The garments, the manufacturing, especially the export manufacturing coalition, our group, has been very up front with the government with this to include us in the immediate vaccination sub-level group A4,” Maria Teresita Jocson-Agoncillo of CONWEP said in a Senate hearing Wednesday.

Agoncillo said the garment sector is having problems in terms of cost of doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The cost of shuttle alone is killing us already… We cannot work from home. I wish we can work from home, but the workers…we really need this (vaccine), because you run factories of minimum 1500 or 2000 people. And the infections [happen] every week,” she said.

“If we can really classify, if the Senate can work on this, the economic affairs group, the trade, it would really be appreciated,” Agoncillo added.

Earlier, the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Emerging Infectious Diseases approved the list of sectors included in the Priority Group A4 of the government’s COVID-19 vaccination plan.

The complete list of Priority Group A4 is as follows:

• [workers in] commuter transport (land, air, and sea), including logistics
• public and private wet and dry market vendors
• frontline workers in groceries, supermarkets, delivery services
• workers in manufacturing for food, beverage, medical and pharmaceutical products
• frontline workers in food retail, including food service delivery
• frontline workers in private and government financial services
• frontline workers in hotels and accommodation establishments
• priests, rabbis, imams, and other religious leaders
• security guards/ personnel assigned in offices, agencies, and organizations identified in the list of priority industries/sectors
• frontline workers in private and government news media
• customer-facing personnel of telecoms, cable and internet service providers, electricity distribution and water distribution utilities
• frontline personnel in basic education and higher education institutions and agencies
• overseas Filipino workers, including those scheduled for deployment within two months
• frontline workers in law/justice, security, and social protection sectors
• frontline government workers engaged in the operations of government transport system, quarantine inspection; worker safety inspection and other COVID-19 response activities
• frontline government workers in charge of tax collection, assessment of businesses for incentives, election, national ID, data collection personnel
• diplomatic community and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) personnel in consular operations
• Department of Public Works and Highways personnel in charge of monitoring government infrastructure projects

So far, the government is vaccinating frontline health workers, senior citizens, and persons with comorbidities. —KBK, GMA News