The Integrated Bar of the Philippines has implored its employees and all Filipino lawyers to observe best practices and cooperate with authorities to avoid COVID-19.
Lawyer Domingo Egon Cayosa, IBP national president and chairman of the Board of Governors, also called on the public to “act responsibly, pray and care for each other especially for those who have less in life.”
The IBP, the country’s mandatory lawyers’ organization, has set up measures to maintain coordination with lawyers nationwide as the government upgraded the COVID-19 alert from Code Red Sub-level 1 to Code Red Sub-level 2 and imposed a land, sea, and air domestic travel restrictions to and from Metro Manila.
According to Cayosa, they have canceled the March 13 and 14 Board of Governors meeting as well as the meeting of the Commission on Bar Discipline.
“All other meetings are to be done by Skype or other electronic/cyberspace means,” Cayosa said, in a statement.
The IBP has moved the March 28-29 Workshop on Legal Aid for Indigenous Peoples in Bukidnon “to better days.”
The IBP national office is also being sanitized. But Cayosa assured that its national office remains functional with minimal personnel on a rotation basis to attend to urgent and important matters. They also have work from home arrangements with its employees and officers.