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Thursday, March 28, 2024

15,000 nurses, health experts may lose jobs due to budget cut

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Thousands of government nurses and other health personnel deployed in the country’s far-flung barangays from Batanes to Jolo may lose their jobs due to the Department of Budget and Management’s move to cut the budget of the Department of Health, according to Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon.

“If we will just follow the proposed budget of the Department of Health, about 15,000 nurses and health professionals will lose their jobs,” Drilon said after grilling officials during the Senate hearing on the proposed P71-billion budget of the DoH.

“This is a very serious concern. I have not seen in my 20 years in the Senate that a budget is slashed this much and the budget of the DoH at that,” Drilon said.

“This is injustice and I will not allow the budget to be passed unless this injustice is addressed,” Drilon added.

At the hearing, Drilon grilled a representative from the Department of Budget and Management for cutting the budget of the DoH by P36.2 billion from P107.3 billion in 2018 to P71 billion in 2019, particularly for health human resources deployment which was decreased from P9.59 billion in 2018 to P1.17 billion next year.

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Director Jane Abella, a representative from DBM, argued the budget was just transferred to Miscellaneous and Personnel Benefit Fund pending a review by the department and the Civil Service Commission.  

“15,000 nurses and health professionals will be on the streets while we are evaluating. Can you imagine the effect of this on our 15,000 workers and their performance? What kind of planning is this?” Drilon asked.

Drilon said it was not correct to transfer the funds of active government health personnel to MPBF, fearing it would not be released “without Malacañang’s clearance.”

Instead of reducing the number of health personnel, Drilon said the DBM should regularize the 26,000 health workers, who are on job order status.

“You cannot have an ‘endo’ situation in the DoH, because the services will be affected. Let us regularize them so that we can provide stability to our health system,” Drilon said.

Drilon proposed that an errata be submitted by the DBM “in order to correct this injustice,” saying that it should not be the Senate scrambling to look for funds to restore the budget, which can be vetoed by the President.

Asked where to source the funds, Drilon said: “We have the budget. Even if we don’t have, reduce some other items in the budget to provide the budget for the DoH. Remove the fat in the budget to provide funds for the DoH.”

Drilon also questioned DBM’s move to reduce the DoH’s budget for health facilities enhancement program to P50 million in 2019 from the current level of P30.26 billion.

“This is something unusual that is why I am alarmed. This is something worrisome,” Drilon said.

The DBM representative pointed to DoH’s underutilization of the budget to justify the budget cuts.

To which Drilon replied: “So that is a punishment. The DoH should show to DBM that it can perform and if it doesn’t perform, we would just let the poor patients suffer?”

Drilon thus asked the DBM to submit an amendment to the budget to provide enough funds for the construction and maintenance of health facilities throughout the country.

Meanwhile, in the face of the threat of 15,000 health workers losing their jobs, Akbayan Senator Risa Hontiveros vowed to fully restore the health department’s budget for next year. 

In a statement issued coinciding with the Senate’s hearing of the DoH’s proposed 2019 budget, Hontiveros raised concerns regarding the deep budget cut in the department’s Health Human Resources Deployment. 

She said the HHRD’s lower funds would undermine the country’s effort to realize universal health care for all Filipinos. 

“This is a massive setback in our goal to provide our people universal health care. A significantly lower budget for the DoH’s HHRD would mean less doctors, nurses, dentists and midwives to be deployed to rural areas and poor communities. Less health workers means less health services. Less health services means less opportunities for Filipinos to lead healthy lives,” Hontiveros said. 

It was reported that from a P9.6 billion budget for this year, the DOH’s HHRD program for 2019 was slashed to around P1.2 billion. 

DoH Secretary Francisco Duque III warned this might result in the loss of about 15,012 health workers’ jobs. 

Hontiveros, who is the Vice Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, vowed to fully restore the DoH’s proposed 2019 budget, including its budget for its Health Facilities Enhancement Program. 

She asked Duque to submit to the Senate a list of the DoH’s “priority among priorities,” giving her commitment to restore the budget for health projects that are about to be completed and for the purchase of equipment that would upgrade the level of care of many health facilities.

The HHRD is a DoH program that takes care of assigning health workers to rural areas and poor communities. 

It assists local government units (LGUs) in paying for the salary of workers when municipalities are unable to do so. 

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