An Executive Order approving and mandating Bureau of Public Service System (BPSS) to allow overtime and hazardous compensation for “exempt employees” and regular personnel responding to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Exempt employees are those personnel that are not permanent employees under the Public Service System.
The Executive Order states that due to COVID-19 and the new regulations implementing the Isolation and Quarantine protocols, front-line workers such as those in the medical profession, law enforcement or emergency response will be in the hazardous situation due to exposure to possible infected persons.
Furthermore, implementing the isolation and quarantine protocols may require such people to work long hours while exposed to hazardous situations.
The Order authorizes BPSS to allow compensation of Temporary Hazardous Work compensation and overtime compensation.
Temporary Hazardous Pay according to the Bureau of Public Service System regulations means “occupation involves unusual and extreme hazards to their health and safety” and could be 15% to 25% of a person’s base salary based on whether the work is considered “most severe” or “severe”. Most severe according to BPSS is “when it is likely to result in serious incapacitation, a long period of compensable lost time, or possible loss of life, when accidents occur frequently in spite of reasonable safety precautions, or when it results in frequent exposure to hazardous conditions where failure to exercise extreme care and judgment may result in accidents which could result in total disability or fatality.”
The Executive Order authorizes such compensation retroactive to February 1st, 2020. “It is now up to the department and ministries to send in their employees paperwork in order to avail of this compensation,” stated President Remengesau upon signing of the Executive Order 439.