THE Victorias Milling Company Inc. (VMC) based in Victorias City has procured coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccines for its employees.
The firm, in a statement, said over 2,000 employees and service providers under VMC are scheduled to be inoculated against Covid-19 in the coming months as the vaccines are expected to arrive by June.
Its president, Minnie Chua, said they 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 the safety and well-being of the people will always be the company's top priority.
As such, the vaccination program is viewed as necessary to protect the employees and their families from getting severely affected when infected by the virus.
She added that "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," Chua said, adding that some employees also lost family members to Covid-19.
The VMC official said this 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, though, 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 their loved ones, over 90 percent of the 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.
