Amid fears that workers of the business process outsourcing (BPO) companies in Cebu City might get disenfranchised come election day, presidential aspirant Vice President Leni Robredo has backed calls for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to open voting centers for BPO employees.

Robredo said that she worked with former Cebu City Mayor Tommy Osmeña on petitioning before the poll body to open voting centers for the benefit of BPO employees who may not be able to cast their vote during the May 2022 national elections “because of the nature of their work.”

“We decided I will write Comelec and ask Comelec to open voting centers for BPO, BPO employees in Cebu,” she said in a message during the IT-BPO meeting in Cebu City on Monday, Dec. 13.

“But as Mayor Tommy said earlier, the main purpose of the petition..is to make sure that our BPO employees are not disenfranchised because of the, because they might not be able to vote because of the nature of their work,” the she added.

Although employers are required to give time for their employees to cast their votes on May 9, 2022, BPO companies follow the holidays and schedules of their foreign clients.

Most of them also work the night shifts, and thus it “would be very difficult for them to wake up in the middle of the day” to vote, Robredo said.

Voting hours have been set by the Comelec from 6 a.m to 7 p.m.

Robredo said they have already identified three areas in Cebu City that would need separate voting centers to cater to local BPO employees, which number to about 200,000. These are the Cebu Business Park, the Cebu Asiatown IT Park, and the Cebu Business Park in Barangay Kasambagan.

But the potential disenfranchment of BPO employees and workers from other sectors is not exclusive to Cebu City.

The Vice President said that this is a problem faced by the BPO industry, which employs 1.2 million Filipinos, as a whole.

“We’re asking Comelec to number one, open voting centers but the long term one is to amend an Executive Order, where certain segment in society are allowed to do absentee voting,” Robredo stressed, noting that overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), uniformed personnel, and other government officials who do election duty are afforded such privilege.

“We do understand that even BPO employees, not just even—not just BPO employees, but all Filipinos who do the same kind of work that BPO people do will benefit from the amendment of the Executive Order which will include them in the categorization that they should also be entitled to absentee voting privileges,” she added.