Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto urged the government Monday to give hazard pay to private janitors, guards and maintenance men in public hospitals, saying in the war against COVID-19, they report to their battle stations every day with the smallest of compensations.
These essential personnel, he said, should get extra pay from the national government.
Recto said: “They stand shoulder to shoulder with medical staff in public hospitals, but because of their status as private service providers, janitors and security guards are not entitled to hazard and hardship pay despite facing the same health risks.
“They are unheralded, but they’re important cogs that keep hospitals running.”.
Recto said contracted janitors and sanitation workers were “virus killers” who keep hospitals clean, “one scrub, one mop, one wipe at a time.”
He related that sanitation workers, housekeepers, janitors, security guards, equipment and building maintenance staff who work for private companies under contract with public hospitals are frontliners, too.
He said without them, a hospital would collapse.
Despite their vital role, Recto said most of these workers “quietly toil on minimum pay.”
He called on the Department of Health and the Department of Budget Management as well as both houses of Congress to come up with a package on how to augment their salary “for the high-risk work they do.”
But the “fast track route,” Recto said, was for the President to issue an order granting them benefits. “Across subsidy is allowed under the law.”
“And why should we not, when we’ve given tens of billions of ayuda to people who are just staying in their homes. Government is readying billions to bail out companies.”
Recto said workers deployed by private contractors in public hospitals were caught in a limbo.
“They are low paid but are still classified as employed—thus disqualifying them for emergency government aid for the jobless. And because they’re private employees, they’re not entitled to hazard pay given to state workers.”
Because these jobs have been privatized by government to contractors who tendered the lowest bid, “the thin margins cascade down to workers in the form of lower wages.”