Working From Home Due to COVID-19

Just this weekend, the Cebu City Mayor's office released an Executive Order (EO) No. 52 series of 2020 stating that Cebu City will be in Community Quarantine due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), this will last up to 30 days.

This general community quarantine is defined as a “condition where movement of people shall be limited to accessing basic necessities and work; and uniformed personnel and quarantine officers shall be present at border points.”

These are some of the things that are mentioned on this EO:

- close seaports in the city for arriving passengers, except for cargo deliveries of essential goods
- class suspensions until April 14, 2020
- a nine-hour curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. commercial establishments such as malls to limit their daily operational hours to 8 p.m. only
- Cebuanaos are highly encouraged to stay at home

Due to this, my husband's company had ordered to allow their employees to also work from home. They could bring their computer systems with them as long as there's good internet access at home. Most of his colleagues also bought wireless pocket WIFI to ensure that they would still have internet access if there would be any problem.

Starting today, my husband is now working at home and this is really a good action by their company management because it is very risky to be traveling from home to their office. The company is just following the government's mandate as well and this of course is for the safety and well being of their employees and Cebu overall.

Currently, there's no confirmed case of COVID-19 within the city and the LGU is definitely taking these moves to ensure that the case would stay as is.

I do hope that this virus will be contained with the help of the Cebuanos and the cooperation of business owners.

I also hope that those who are working in the call center companies would do something to ensure that their employees would observe the most hygienic practices while inside their buildings and stations. I heard that some companies do not provide their employees their personal headsets, this is really sad. I hope they could provide them with their own from now on.

Working from home really has a lot of advantages and I have here my own list of why I do hope my husband's company would allow him to work from home from now on until forever:

1. I am pregnant and so he can accompany me at home.
2. He doesn't have to drive to the office which means less accident possibilities.
3. I can cook for him which means money savings as he doesn't need to buy food outside.
4. We could eat together and have more time together.
5. He can help me with the baby during the day when the baby arrives.
6. He can rest and sleep in between work if needed.
7. He could do more of his hobbies like playing the guitar and practicing piano.