DOLE to Shoulder Salary of Regular Employees With Consumed Leave Credits

Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Secretary Silvestre Bello III has announced that his department will be covering the salaries of private employees who have already consumed their leave credits but are forced to take a leave due to the enforced community quarantine in Metro Manila.

Bello made the announcement this morning to DZMM. "Whatever their salary is," he said in Filipino. He clarified DOLE will subsidize only for the days that the employee was absent without leave credits. For example, if they have only five days worth of leave credits left, and they're away for 14, DOLE will only pay the nine days. 

All they need to show as proof is the memorandum from the company that they are on quarantine leave as well as paperwork to confirm that they've run out of leave credits. "So it will now be the Department of Labor who will subsidize," he explained. "Actually the subsidy will go to the employer, who will use the subsidy to pay the employees," he added.

Emergency Employment Program

DOLE has already prepared a program for non-regular employees or those who are employed on a "no work-no pay" basis. 

“We have the emergency employment program. Meaning, we will ask them to work, but the salary will be minimum wage."

People who fall under this category only need to go to a DOLE office to say that they lost jobs because of the work suspension. 

The same program was used when Boracay was shut down for six months. Works from the travel and tourism industry flocked to DOLE for temporary jobs. 

This story originally appeared on Pep.ph.

* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.