To combat the ongoing pandemic, the Quezon City Government has entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), and Healthcare Information Management Association of the Philippines (HIMAP) to amplify its efforts to administer the COVID-19 vaccine.

Through the partnership, the local government unit (LGU) will facilitate and expedite the inoculation of qualified IT-BPM employees who report to offices located in Quezon City. The MOA also gives healthcare workers from the participating companies the option to volunteer and assist in the administration of the vaccine.

“I am proud of the many alliances forged between Quezon City and the private sector in the past year to battle the health crisis. It’s an indication of good governance and trust from constituents and stakeholders,” said Quezon City Mayor Joy G. Belmonte. “More importantly, it will exponentially speed up and expand our various initiatives to address the pandemic.”

She is also hopeful that by working with the IT-BPM industry through IBPAP, CCAP, and HIMAP, Quezon City will be able to further its unified objectives of helping the Philippine economy recover by hastening and decentralizing the vaccination process and maximizing its resources so there are more venues and more healthcare workers to accelerate the whole endeavor.

“This is the first partnership of its kind and we hope that this will serve as a template for our ongoing efforts with other LGUs. Early access to the vaccine is really top-of-mind for our sector and as such, we are dearly and immensely thankful to the leadership of the Quezon City Government,” said IBPAP President & CEO Rey E. Untal.

A total of 29 IT-BPM firms have already signed up over 67K of their employees under the program. The first batch of volunteer healthcare workers was inoculated at the Araneta Mega Vaccination Center ahead of their assistance in the vaccination process.

The collaboration runs in parallel with the IT-BPM industry’s participation in several tripartite agreements to procure over 1 Million doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Novovax, which are going to arrive towards the latter part of Q2 and continue throughout the second half of the year.