BPO denies report on 200 COVID-infected agents

By Dolly Yasa and Glazyl Yulo Masculino

 

BACOLOD City – A top official of a Business Processes Outsourcing (BPO) company denied reports that 200 of its call center agents were infected with the coronavirus disease or COVID-19.

It is fake news, according to Siony Hijara Ferraris, Site Director and General Manager of Panasiatic Call Center here.

“We do not have 200 positive cases. This is a fake news circulating around and legal actions were already initiated to address this,” Ferraris said in a press statement issued Thursday.

Ferraris also said that “as to the employee who passed away, we have not yet received any official result from her swab test.”

“It is also not true that her mother and her roommate, who is a work-from-home agent, were COVID positive,” she added.

The mother and the agent underwent swab test and are still waiting for the official results.

Ferraris lamented that their employees are being discriminated because of fake stories being spread.

“It is unfortunate, that our communities chose to discriminate, to turn away our employees, to instigate libelous attacks on their persons, and even locking them out of their homes or

apartments which they have paid for with their hard-earned money.”

Ferreris also said that “At a time where everyone was afraid about the ugly reality of rising infections and transmissions, we chose to tell our employees the uncomfortable truth.”

“Like always, we chose transparency and we confronted the reality of the pandemic squarely. So what actually happened is we got accused of not putting safety measures in place without even verifying facts.

Earlier, Vice Mayor El Cid Familiaran appealed to the public not to discriminate BPO workers.