The House Committee on Labor and Employment will request the government’s pandemic task force to defer the two resolutions requiring Covid-19 vaccinations for on-site workers.

During the online meeting on Wednesday, panel chair Eric Pineda said they would write a letter to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) to suspend the IATF Resolutions 148-B and 149.

“We will write a letter immediately to the chairman, to the co-chairs of the IATF that the recommendation of the committee of labor and employment is for them to suspend until further notice,” Pineda said.

According to IATF-EID Resolution 148-B issued on November 11, on-site workers are required to be fully vaccinated.

Under the resolution, on-site workers who remain to be unvaccinated should not be terminated but must take reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction or RT-PCR tests “regularly at their own expense.”

Meanwhile, IATF Resolution 149 states that all partially vaccinated employees in the public and private sector tasked to do onsite work need not undergo regular RT-PCR test at their own expense, as long as their second dose is not yet due pursuant to the interval prescribed for the brand of vaccine received as first dose.

The Department of Labor and Employment has reiterated that while employers shall require their eligible workers who are tasked to do “on-site work” to get vaccinated, they may not terminate other employees who refused to obtain the vaccine. (PNA)