OPPOSITION to Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial mounted on Tuesday as ACTS OFW Rep. John Bertiz and the group called Action for Good Governance reiterated their objections to her confirmation as health secretary.
Bertiz had earlier filed a formal complaint with Commission on Appointments and blamed Ubial for allowing a foreign-owned company Winston Q8 to collect exorbitant medical testing fees from all overseas Filipino workers bound for Kuwait.
“[Ubial] has failed to enforce the law, has failed to fulfill her duties to investigate and file charges against Winston Q8 and its accredited clinics despite mounting evidence that the clinics are violating Memorandum Circular 2016-0627,” Bertiz said in a letter to Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III.
“The Secretary has not initiated any investigation within the DoH on how this illegal scheme was allowed in the first place,” Bertiz said, adding that it was during Ubial’s time as health undersecretary that cartels preying on OFWs increased experienced a tenfold resurgence.
Bertiz opposition followed that of Kabayan Party-list Rep. Harry L. Roque and Senate Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III.
Roque opposed Ubial’s confirmation because “she is not the right person to head a department” while Sotto said he would block her confirmation because of her distribution of condoms to schoolchildren.
Also in a letter to Pimentel, Roque scored Ubial’s “propensity to lie in order to cover up for her incompetence” as exemplified by her handling of the Zika virus and Dengue Vaccine Issue and other various documented behavior.
Roque also raised her supposedly poor work ethic and performance at present and throughout her 28 years of being in the DoH.
The grounds for opposition are supported likewise by the members of the Action for Good Governance who pointed out specifically her “wastage of government resources” through her habit of taking excessive trips both internationally and domestically where she allegedly would bring with her a huge entourage, including family and friends.
While they cited numerous trips in the complaint, they presented as examples her trip to Cuba with an entourage of 15 people and her being in Ilocos vacationing with extended family during the code white period of the DoH when she should have been working. The group matched her trips with her output and noted that this was dismal in relation to other agencies.
Additional grounds for their opposition included false claims in media as well as direct disobedience to the policy statements of the President as far as contractualization is concerned.