Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva believes the Work from-Home Law (WHL) or Telecommuting enacted in 2019 can address the worsening traffic condition, especially in the metropolitan areas.
Villanueva said this setup was proven effective when the law took effect during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He pointed out that work productivity did not suffer because of the alternative working arrangements provided by the new law.
In fact, he said an e-commerce and digital transactions grew by 20 percent from 2021 to 2022.
This was amid the fact that most people are still working from home.
The WFH Law was also instrumental for the IT-BPO sector wherein 23,000 new jobs were created at the time of the pandemic in 2020 and 100,000 in 2021 with revenues increasing by around 12 percent in 2021, reaching a total of $28.8 billion.
“We filed Senate Bill No. 135 which seeks to allow alternative work arrangements for companies registered with the Investment Promotion Agencies,” he said.
He noted that WFH and other alternative work setup are here to stay and seen to further improve productivity, ease traffic burden, improve work-life balance, reduce our workers’ expenses and contribute to the overall health of the economy.
He said the pandemic may be over but our traffic situation has gotten more intolerable. According to a 2018 Japan International Cooperation Agency study, the Philippines lost P3.5 billion a day due to the heavy traffic in Metro Manila.
In December 2022, in a project report for the Comprehensive Traffic Management Plan, JICA noted that “transportation costs of road users.
This comprises vehicle operating cost and travel time cost which is now at P4.9 billion per day in Metro Manila.
The Senate leader said this will increase to P9.4 billion a day by 2027 if nothing is done.
While inflation has slowed down to 4.7% in July 2023 from 5.4 percent in June 2023, the average inflation rate from January to July 2023 is still at 6.8 percent.
He said this still puts financial constraints on our commuters, especially our minimum wage earners receiving a salary of P610 per day in the National Capital Region. Macon Ramos-Araneta