The local business community is seeking an expansion of operational capacity once "safe spaces" in malls, factories and other workplaces have been created.

Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion has proposed the establishment of safe spaces in the workplace when 80 percent of the workers have been fully vaccinated. Owners of malls and buildings have thrown support for the safe space proposal.

“We would like to propose to the government to allow us to implement safe spaces with an increased workforce capacity as soon as we reach 80% vaccination or herd immunity in our respective buildings," Concepcion said in a statement Tuesday, July 6.

"Creating safe spaces will allow us to stop transmission, the spread of new variants, and even indirectly provide immunity to the unvaccinated," he added.

Under the proposal, a safe space can be declared in an office building, factory, mall or other place of work in the private sector once majority of the workforce have completed their vaccination against the coronavirus disease. Such vaccination of workers will hopefully convince the government to allow business establishments to expand their operational capacity from the current 50 percent.

Concepcion said safe spaces provide an additional layer of safety for people and allow private establishments to optimize their operation.

"We want to send a clear message that workspaces are ‘safe spaces,'" he said.

Concepcion noted the business community has already started working on a roadmap to set milestones for economic recovery. The creation of the safe spaces at the workplace was one of the ideas discussed in Concepcion's recent meeting with mall and building owners.

“We are still under the consultation stage and safe spaces is just one of the ideas being floated around as we expect to achieve population protection by September/October in NCR Plus," he said.

"We are looking at safe spaces as a private sector initiative that could be adopted at the discretion of the owners of the establishments—buildings, malls, factories, etc," he added.

"We are discussing ideas such as safe spaces, among other ideas, as we would integrate this into our roadmap which will give the picture of how our economy could move as we achieve population protection then herd immunity,” he said.

Among those present in the meeting are Filinvest Land Inc. President and CEO Josephine Yap, SM Prime executive committee chair Hans Sy, Ayala Property Management Corp. chair Bobby Dy, Alliance Global Inc. COE Kevin Tan, and Robinsons Land Corp. President and CEO Frederick Go.