Reelectionist Senator Leila de Lima has joined the call of the information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) firms to allow them to carry on with work-from-home (WFH) arrangements.

De Lima slammed the return-to-office order of the Fiscals Incentives Review Board (FIRB), saying it only wants to dictate how IT-BPM firms want to conduct their business and how IT-BPM employees spend their money.

The detained lawmaker argued that "the pandemic is not over" and that the country is "in the midst of a transportation crisis." Thus, it is only right to suspend the return-to-office order to continuously protect the families of BPM employees from the lingering Covid-19 pandemic and to be able to keep up with surging oil prices and goods, including transportation expenses.

De Lima also tagged the order as an "ill-planned transition."

"he WFH arrangement has been proposed to help decongest our traffic by reducing the density of commuting public. Under a WFH arrangement of an IT-BPM firm, productivity is increased due to the removal of inefficiencies brought about by terrible traffic conditions," De Lima said in a statement on March 29.

"Finally, there is no guarantee that the return-to-office (RTO) order will redound to a net positive gain for our economy. The industry stands to lose resources and trained employees if there is an abrupt shift in the working arrangements. In the short term, there is no guarantee that the other businesses in the eco-zones will prosper during an ill-planned transition," she added.

The Senator further said that while the intent to stimulate economic activities in the retail industries in the eco-zones is understandable, "the request of the IT-BPM firms and employees are not unreasonable."

"A considerable investment has been made to keep our economy afloat and we owe it to the industry to allow them to ease the transition back to the eco-zones," De Lima said.

She also said that the WFH setup allowed IT-BPM firms to hire more Filipinos beyond the capacity of their physical offices, adding that it is something "that we can look at to increase meaningful employment in our country."

She stressed that IT-BPM firms invested in WFH arrangements for their employees and "it worked for everyone concerned."

"This was not an insignificant achievement. The IT-BPM industry was one of our lifelines during the worst days of the pandemic," De Lima said.

"Now our economic managers want to forget all that just so the IT-BPM firms would be forced to re-modify their working arrangements and their employees, spend their hard-earned money in other businesses in the economic zones (eco-zones)," De Lima added.