ESSENTIAL workers should be exempted from the “No Vaccination, No Ride” policy even if they are still unvaccinated.
This clarification was issued by Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Secretary Silvestre Bello III after several essential workers about to go to work were prevented by law enforcement authorities from taking public transportation when they failed to show a vaccination card.
Bello insisted that essential workers going to work should not be prevented from taking public transportation because this will have an impact on the smooth flow of the economy.
Because of this, Bello appealed to concerned agencies to implement a massive information drive to create awareness on why unvaccinated essential workers should not be barred from taking public transportation.
He said there are requirements that employers ask their employees to comply with, like presenting a negative RT-PCR test result when reporting for work, or to regularly undergo antigen testing every two weeks to prove they were not infected by the virus.