About 40% of the working persons consider they face an extreme (8.3%) or increased (31.9%) risk of becoming infected with the novel coronavirus at the place of work. In the case of 59.8% of employees, the associated risk is moderate. According to experts of the Center “Partnership for Development” (CPD), who presented the data, as the pandemic situation persists and some of the vulnerabilities of employees became more accentuated, the authorities should take measures to motivate and support the employers and employees and to introduce conditions for working at the workplace, IPN reports.

About 65% of the working persons felt safe during the pandemic when they fulfilled their professional duties. Even if some of the employees in the period could work remotely or through hybrid methods (at workplace and remotely), not all the persons could do this.

The disaggregated assessment of data shows that together with the advancing age of working persons, unsafely at the workplace increases. This way, for each fifth working person who is older than 60, the working environment is associated rather with a feeling of unsafely due to the novel coronavirus. The area of activity (especially transport and trade) and the presence of disability influence the unsafely level up.

The analysis of the profile of those who tend to avoid sharing with employers their concerns about the non-observance of the COVID-19 protection measures showed that these include primarily those with incomplete studies and those who work rather as unqualified specialists. The employees with a lower level of education are less conscious about the way in which they can defend their labor rights in terms of improvement of the safety level during the pandemic.

It is recommended developing the employer subsidization program so as to efficiently adjust the workplaces to the safety protocol for infection prevention, offering fiscal benefits to employers for purchasing the products needed for implementing the protocols, supplementing the set of measures for actively informing te working population about the necessity of getting vaccinated and continuously obeying the protection measures and informing the employers about the risks so that they implement the safety protocols at the workplace during the pandemic. The CPD experts consider the legislation should be supplemented with clauses providing that the employers should cover the costs associated for the long-term recovery of employees who got infected with COVID-19 at the workplace.

The note was compiled in the framework of the project “Civic Initiative for Promotion of Employed Persons’ Rights during Pandemic Period” that is implemented by CPD with financial support from Soros Foundation Moldova.