Duterte: Legal for employers to require vaccination from applicants

Employers have the right to refuse employment to an applicant who is not vaccinated, President Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday.

Duterte made the remark amid discussions over giving disincentives to those who have yet to be inoculated against COVID-19 despite improved vaccine supply.

“You have the right to refuse or to accept as an employee somebody who is not vaccinated and will go and join the rest of employees and the factory or the place or whatever you have as your business [then] this guy would start to contaminate everybody,” Duterte said in his Talk to the People briefing.

Duterte indicated that employers who would refuse unvaccinated individuals were protecting their property, investments, and business.

"Second is that you are protecting your employees," Duterte said.

“I think it’s legal for employers not to accept who are not vaccinated, tama sila I agree with them,” he added.

National Task Force Against COVID-19 (NTF) spokesperson Restituto Padilla Jr. earlier said that the government was discussing how it could implement mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 to further increase coverage rates.

Padilla said the basis for mandatory vaccination was statistics that showed most of the severe or critical COVID-19 cases were the unvaccinated patients.

Vaccine czar and NTF Against COVID-19 Chief Implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. has said that he was in favor of mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 and that an executive order from Duterte could be sufficient.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) earlier said that it was looking at how it could  implement a “no vaccine, no subsidy” policy for unvaccinated beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer or Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).

The government said 29,809,085 individuals or 38.64% of the 77 million target population had been already fully vaccinated against the virus as of November 8.

The country officially rolled out its vaccination program on March 1. -NB, GMA News