Over 2,000 employees and service providers under Victorias Milling Company, Inc. are scheduled to be inoculated against COVID-19 in the coming months as the vaccines are expected to arrive by June.
VMC President Minnie Chua said they’ve already submitted the names of their employees who agreed to sign-up for vaccination, including those who are not directly employed by the company but are outsourced.
Chua said that the safety and well-being of our people will always be our top priority. As such, the vaccination program is necessary to protect their employees and their families from getting severely affected when infected by the virus. The program will also help in restoring normalcy in our operations and allow us to continue serving our planters.
“We’ve had a few employees who contracted the virus and thankfully, they are now fully recovered,” she said, adding that some employees also lost family members to COVID-19.
This, Chua said, is one of the greatest challenges the company faced and “we are thankful that despite the restrictions and protocols we’ve established, the employees and our clients cooperated.”
She admitted that there was initial hesitation from almost half of the workforce when they broached the idea of mass vaccination. But after a week of advocacy and testimonials from those who got infected or lost loved ones, over 90 percent of our employees signed-up for the vaccination program.
“We are thankful to our chairman emeritus, Lucio Tan, and the LT Group for initiating this program to procure vaccines for its employees,” Chua said.
She added that mechanics are also being drawn up to allow employees to access vaccines for their families and households.