DOST maintains flexible working arrangements to help ease MM traffic

MANILA – The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) has been continuously implementing flexible working arrangements (FWAs) to help alleviate traffic woes in Metro Manila, its chief said Friday.

"The DOST has adopted work from home and flexible time arrangements since the Covid-19 pandemic," Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. told the Philippine News Agency, adding they have not stopped implementing these since then.

"We at DOST, depending on the suitability to agency operations, continued to implement what we have implemented during the pandemic," he said.

Solidum said this when asked for the DOST's response to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.' s directive to Cabinet members to send recommendations on how to ease the commuters' woes and how their offices will adjust and configure their work environment.

The arrangements include work shifts and a compressed work week while maintaining skeletal workforce. Options also include working from a satellite office or within the DOST system.

Solidum added they also encourage employees to carpool.

"These (measures) contribute to employees lessening (the) chance of being affected by traffic and also add to their savings," he said.

"The DOST fully supports the initiative to ease commuters' woes," he added. (PNA)