San Miguel Corporation (SMC) president Ramon S. Ang led the company’s senior management team in paying tribute to SMC personnel who succumbed to COVID-19 since the pandemic began, during a simple mass held at the company’s Pasig City offices—which serves as vaccination site for its NCR-based employees—as part of activities marking the company’s 131st anniversary.

Ang, who was joined by the business heads of the diversified conglomerate’s Food and Beverage, Power, Fuels, and Infrastructure businesses, as well as members of its Ligtas Lahat employee vaccination task force, called on all SMC employees nationwide who joined via video teleconferencing, to honor their fallen colleagues and continue the work of serving the public, and answering a higher purpose.

Ang also paid tribute to members of the company’s Ligtas Lahat task force nationwide, who had been organizing vaccination activities in various provinces as part of the company’s mandate to make the vaccines available to all employees and workers in its nationwide network.

“We’re marking this milestone, our 131st anniversary with heavy hearts, because the pandemic has taken away many of our beloved colleagues and friends–members of our San Miguel family. We reflect not just on their work and contributions to our company, but most importantly, their impact on our lives,” said Ang.

“This crisis has affected all of us individually, nobody has been spared. Probably each of us has had someone we know or love, taken away from us. We owe it to them to do everything we can to get as many people vaccinated and protected from this virus,” Ang said.

Even as the company has already completed vaccinating the greater majority of its employees and extended workforce nationwide, Ang vowed that San Miguel would continue to push for vaccination as a way out of the economic crisis, and that the company would continue to help in government’s national vaccination effort.

He reported that the company has reached around 90 percent of its nationwide vaccination goal, with over 64,000 employees and extended workers receiving either their first or second dose of COVID-19 jabs. The company aims to fully vaccinate up to an estimated 70,000 individuals by November, Ang said.

Coinciding with its anniversary, Ang instructed the donation of some 15,000 doses of company-procured Astra Zeneca vaccines to various cities as well as the national government.

BAKUNA BUS

As part of SMC’s anniversary activities, SMC’s Ligtas Lahat vaccination task force conducted vaccination and outreach activities at the company’s home cities of Mandaluyong and Pasig–in appreciation of their support to the company’s employee vaccination drive.

SMC launched its new mobile vaccination unit dubbed the “SMC Bakuna Bus”, in Mandaluyong City, deploying it together with its own medical teams to the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong, to vaccinate inmates.

After that, the company’s vaccination team went to the Pasig Elementary School to vaccinate Jeepney drivers, their families, and other individuals falling under the A4 and A5 categories.

SMC’s partner non-government organization for its feeding center and food bank in Tondo, Manila, Better World Tondo, meanwhile served hot meals and food packs at the vaccination drive.

Ang lauded the efforts of the company’s nationwide Ligtas Lahat vaccination task force, saying that their work was crucial to helping protect as many of their own employees as well as those in its communities, and that they were contributing to the country’s vaccination goals.

Earlier this year, prior to the arrival of its company-procured vaccines, SMC hired over a hundred medical nurses and doctors, and deployed these to various LGUs in Metro Manila, to augment manpower at understaffed vaccination sites.  The deployment of these medical professionals at various vaccination sites will continue, Ang said.

Apart from rolling out one of the biggest COVID-response initiatives in the country, which has totaled over P14 billion and stretched well beyond 2020, SMC has also continued with all its major strategic programs, in a bid to maintain investor confidence, boost economic recovery, and ensure more Filipinos have jobs.

These include its completion in 2020 of the final segment from Pozzurubio, Pangasinan to Rosario, La Union of the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEX); the completion of Skyway Stage 3 from Buendia in Makati to the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX), and the continuation of its New Manila International Airport in Bulacan, and the Pasig River Expressway (PAREX) project, approved by government recently.

It has also committed to continue all its major sustainability initiatives. Among these: the P1 billion Tullahan river cleanup that has so far removed over 400, 000 metric tons of silt and solid waste from the river, and its P2 billion Pasig River rehabilitation project that aims to remove 3 million metric tons of silt and solid waste from the river.

It also laid out one of the biggest upland and mangroves reforestation programs in its history through the SMC Global Power’ s Project 747, that aims to plant seven million trees and mangroves in 4,000 hectares in over seven provinces.

“We will continue to work for the good of our country and our people as we have always done in our over a century of history of operations. Now, more than ever, our country and our people need us to deliver and contribute,” Ang said.