The P21.3-billion University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) Diliman Project will have a huge multiplier effect on the economy of Quezon City in terms of creating new jobs and income, Rep. Michael Defensor (Anakalusugan) said Sunday.
“We are wholly endorsing the project. Besides vastly improving public access to world-class charity hospitalization and outpatient services, the project will create 3,400 new permanent jobs,” Defensor, who is running for Quezon City mayor in the May 9 elections, said.
“We’ve gone over the project details, and the hospital alone will create 1,500 new full-time occupations for medical and allied healthcare staff plus 1,900 new fixed positions for general administrative workers,” Defensor said in a statement.
Hundreds of new jobs in building and equipment maintenance, cleaning, and security services will also be produced and contracted out, according to Defensor.
“In the initial phase, the project will generate thousands of new construction-related jobs that will benefit low-income households,” Defensor pointed out.
“Once the project is completed, additional jobs will be created by small businesses that will emerge around the hospital’s 24-hour operation,” Defensor said.
“The new demand for housing, food, laundry, transportation, and other services will require supply,” Defensor said.
The UP-PGH Diliman Project involves the development of a state-of-the-art, 700-bed university teaching and research hospital with multispecialty capabilities, outpatient services, hospice care, auxiliary services, and a College of Medicine.
The facility will be built on 4.2 hectares of open land inside the 493-hectare UP Diliman campus. It will have a gross floor area of 80,000 square meters plus 13,600 square meters for car parking.
The new public hospital is envisioned to receive 2,000 outpatient visits per day and 39,196 in-patient admissions per year.
The project will create new plantilla positions for doctors, nurses and nursing attendants, medical technologists, midwives, pharmacists and pharmacy aides, dentists and dental aides, nutritionist-dieticians, respiratory therapists, radiologic technologists, social welfare officers and assistants, laboratory technicians and aides, medical equipment technicians, health education and promotion officers, physical therapy technicians, and health physicists.
It will also establish new fixed positions for administrative officers and assistants, engineers, accountants, statisticians, chemists, training specialists and assistants, computer maintenance
technologists, housekeepers, cooks, laundry workers, warehousemen, and seamstresses.
UP is implementing the project through a 25-year “build-transfer-maintain” contract with a private partner.
If elected Quezon City mayor, Defensor said he would work with UP and its private partner to fast-track the project.
“Whatever the project needs in terms of local government permits and licenses, we will surely expedite them,” Defensor said.
