BARMM employees ordered to work from home as health chief, 3 others get COVID-19

COTABATO CITY – Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod “Murad” Ebrahim ordered the main building within the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) compound here disinfected and its employees to work from home as the region’s top health officer tested positive for COVID-19.

After Bangsamoro Health Minister Saffrullah Dipatuan and his wife announced Wednesday night they tested positive for COVID-19, three more employees including the head of the region’s finance, budget and management services department contracted SARS-CoV2, the virus that caused the disease.

Reports of the new infection prompted the Bangsamoro Chief Minister to declare the two-story executive building up for disinfection and ordered employees to work from home indefinitely, a statement from BARMM said.

“All workers under the office of Chief Minister Murad were told to work from home,” Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, BARMM interior minister, told the Inquirer.

Ebrahim ordered the decontamination of all offices inside the executive building.

Other buildings within the 10-hectare complex that houses the regional offices of BARMM and some regional offices of the Soccsksargen region will also have to be disinfected later but they were not included in the work-from-home order. Only a limited number of personnel in certain offices will remain at the BARMM’s executive building to facilitate the disinfection.

But Sinarimbo assured the public government services would continue under the work-from-home arrangement.

As of Thursday, BARMM monitored a total of 688 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 337 of them in Lanao del Sur and Marawi City area.

CFC