DAVAO CITY – Officials of the Davao regional office of the labor department held a series of meetings on Wednesday with the management of NCCC Mall and SSI to ensure that no worker will be displaced in the aftermath of the tragic fire two days before Christmas.

The consultations followed a directive from Secretary Silvestre Bello III to provide all possible assistance to the more than 2,000 affected workers.

Also involved were officials of the Bureau of Working Conditions (BWC), Occupational Safety and Health Center (OSHC) and the Employees Compensation Commission (ECC).

Earlier, NCCC management committed that the 616 NCCC Mall regular workers will not lose their jobs and continue to receive their salaries as they will be reassigned to their other business units.

NCCC has submitted a report on the deployment of their regular workers to DOLE and is now being validated.

For the 192 agency deployed workers under Bmirck Cooperative, NCCC said that talks are ongoing regarding the possibility for the workers to be deployed to another establishment or malls in Davao City.

On the other hand, the SSI management has committed that all their employees will be paid their salary up to December 31, 2017.

SSI also added they will be rebuilding within 60 days as they have already found another building for their operations and assured their workers’ employment as soon as their operations resume.

A proposal for the payment of workers salary for the 60-day period is also being considered by the principal of SSI in the United States. ### DOLE Davao Region