Senate asks DOE to revisit 2-day workweek

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Energy (DOE) must revisit its two onsite work days in the middle of the oil crisis, senators said on Monday.

Senate Proactive Response and Oversight for Timely and Effective Crisis Strategy (Protect) Committee chairperson Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian and Sen. Joel Villanueva made the recommendation during the panel’s hearing.

“I think because of the magnitude of the problem right now on oil supply, everything is focused on the DOE, so may I suggest just to revisit that two-day work week,” Gatchalian, speaking in a mix of Filipino and English, told Energy Secretary Sharon Garin.

“Everyone is looking at the DOE, but if it’s not visible three times a week, there’s also the optics problem. May I suggest to revisit that and see if the output is really effective and efficient,” he continued.

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This came after Sen. Imee Marcos, during the Protect panel hearing, criticized the agency’s work setup while dealing with the ongoing crisis.

“The department, through the order of the secretary, has adopted only two days of onsite work per week, with only 50 percent of DOE officials and employees reporting, and the rest is all work from home… It seems like you don’t have any urgency in your body, okay? Can you explain the rationale for this madness? People are angry that you only work for two days,” Marcos said in Filipino.

The DOE implemented the said workweek as a way to save energy amid the ongoing crisis. 

Before this, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the implementation of four-day workweeks among cabinet agencies as part of its energy conservation efforts.

In the same hearing, Garin defended the DOE’s work setup.

“Work from home doesn’t mean we don’t work, ma’am. We work every day. We meet every day, even on weekends… We’re doing meetings and doing everything that we can do just to keep our country sufficient in supply and monitor the prices,” Garin said.

Still, Sen. Marcos insisted that a two-day workweek is “reprehensible and incomprehensible.”

But Garin reiterated that the agency was capable of doing work even from home.

She said, responding mostly in Filipino, to the senator: “You can see what we have been doing over the last eight weeks… We can show it in our accomplishments, Mr. Chair… The objective of working from home is not to stop working; it is to become more efficient. Now we are trying to save [energy] for the country so we can contribute,”

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Later, Villanueva empathized with Garin, highlighting the DOE’s efforts “to become the model department” in energy conservation.

However, like Gatchalian, he reminded Garin to consider the optics of having a two-day workweek during an energy crisis.

“The public really sees the DOE as a very important department. And if it is in the headlines and everywhere that it only comes twice a week, it is hard to defend,” Villanueva said in Filipino. /jpv /atm