President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) to sanction local government units (LGUs) and their chief executives who do not perform well in hastening the government’s COVID-19 vaccination program.
During his Talk to the People Address aired Wednesday, Duterte said they have seen “fault lines” in the overall vaccination drive and that he was unhappy with the pace of the rollout.
“I am not content with the way the vaccination is going,” he said. “I have… ordered DILG Secretary [Eduardo] Año to impose the necessary sanctions against LGUs and LCEs who are not performing nor using the doses given to them in the most expeditious manner,” he said.
“I will hold each and every LGU accountable for this..I do not know where they commit the error. Why is the vaccination slow even if the vaccines are already there? Here in the NCR (National Capital Region) it’s okay. At the regional level, there is a problem,” Duterte said.
He said he wanted the country to reach its goal of 1 million jabs or more a day.
He called on National Task Force Against COVID-19 chief Carlito Galvez Jr., as well as the police and military to provide all the necessary support to the LGUs, particularly in the delivery of the vaccine doses and mobilization of resources.
He suggested that once the vaccines are delivered, PNP and Air Force helicopters should take over and deliver the jabs to different municipal governments.
Responding to the President’s directive, Año said he will meet with governors, mayors, as well as with the regional directors of the Department of Health (DOH) and the PNP to ask them to intensify their vaccination initiatives.
Año also vowed to investigate a Zamboanga del Sur fire that destroyed almost 150,000 vaccine doses.
He said the investigation will be conducted by the DOH, Philippine National Police (PNP), and the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) and the DILG.
Some 148,678 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were destroyed in the fire that started at the maintenance department of the Zamboanga del Sur Medical Center.
The incident, he said, must serve as a wake up call to the local chief executives about the need to take extra care of the vaccines in their possession and the necessity of quickly administering them to the intended population.
Galvez, meanwhile, said the government could achieve its vaccination target of 1 million to 1.5 million jabs a day by Nov. 30.
To achieve this goal, Galvez said there is a need to activate around 4,000 to 5,000 vaccination sites operating nationwide that can each accommodate at least 500 people daily.
He said they would be using shopping malls, universities, schools, gyms, police and military camps and the function halls of different government agencies for these vaccination sites.
At the same time, he said the government is hoping to fully vaccinate at least 90 percent of teachers, students, and other school personnel.
Citing data reported by Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chairman Prospero de Vera, Galvez said 87 to 90 percent of teachers were already vaccinated.
The government will also ramp up the vaccination of teaching personnel and secondary students under the Department of Education, he said.
He said the administration of booster shots for medical workers and other health care personnel in the hospitals will be prioritized by the end of the month.
Galvez, however, acknowledged the huge disparity of vaccination rate in provincial areas compared to the National Capital Region must be addressed.
The latest data of the National COVID-19 Vaccination dashboard showed the Philippines has already administered a total of 60.4 million doses, with 27.7 million people already fully vaccinated and 32.6 million people receiving their first dose.
The average daily vaccination rate in the last seven weeks has slightly slowed down to 511,434 doses, compared to the previous week’s 522,272 doses due to the observance of the All Saints’ Day holiday.
A leftist lawmaker criticized the President’s call to sanction LGUs, saying he should sanction himself and “his militarist policies” for the slow vaccine rollout.
ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro said any underperformance at the LGU level only mirrored a more serious inability on the part of the national government to make the vaccines quickly accessible to every Filipino.
