A health workers group on Thursday said it would give the Department of Health (DOH) until today to give them their overdue benefits for serving amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) moved up its deadline for the DOH to respond and said its members would go on strike if the benefits were not paid by Friday, the group’s president Robert Mendoza said.
“We talked with our leaders yesterday and came up with the deadline on Friday… Our previous deadline on Sept. 1 was rescheduled to Friday because we don’t expect any good news for health workers,” Mendoza said in Filipino on ABS-CBN’s Teleradyo.
Health workers were not happy with the Senate Blue Ribbon committee hearing into the DOH’s spending of its pandemic funds on Wednesday, Mendoza said, because they focused only on the special risk allowance (SRA) and did not touch on other benefits.
“It’s possible public and private health workers will unite to show government their dismay,” he said.
“They are not paying all the benefits and health workers are dismayed. They owe us a lot.”
The government’s COVID-19 hazard pay covers public health workers, while the SRA is for health workers in both public and private facilities.
On Wednesday, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) announced that it released P311.79 million but only for the long overdue SRAs.
But Mendoza said the DOH has yet to provide the P38,000 worth of meal and transportation allowances for December 2020 to June 2021, as well as the P3,000 monthly active duty hazard pay.
Meanwhile, St. Luke’s executive vice president and chief medical officer Dr. Benjamin Campomanes said health workers in their hospitals in Quezon City and Taguig City are resigning at a time when they are at full capacity.
He said their hospital usually has 66 nurses in its emergency rooms, but this went down to 43. Most of their health workers had already left the country and taken jobs abroad.
Campomanes also said some of them had been infected by the coronavirus and their co-workers were put under quarantine as protocol.
Also on Thursday, the All U.P. Workers Union-Manila again decried the non-payment of COVID-19 benefits under Bayanihan Act 2 of about 4,800 health personnel of the largest and leading COVID referral center in the country, the Philippine General Hospital.
The union assailed the DOH in its chronic neglect, gross incompetence, and lack of empathy to the exhaustive and dangerous work that frontline health workers have been enduring since PGH became a COVID referral center on March 30, 2020.
“We have been torn long enough! This is not the first time we have to protest just so DOH can pay attention and address our justifiable concerns. At this point when more is being asked from us because of the surge of COVID-19 cases again, we expect the same from DOH. But all we get are lame excuses and finger-pointing especially with regards to our benefits. This angers and demoralizes us!” Karen Mae Faurillo, union president, said.
The union was referring to the benefits stipulated under Republic Act 11494 or Bayanihan to Recover as One Act. The following benefits were not yet provided by the DOH to PGH health workers:
* SRA amounting to a total of P90 million. About 3,000 health workers did not get their SRA for the period of Dec. 20, 2020 to June 30, 2021. SRA is pegged at P227.27/duty-day of every health worker. Quarantine days due to COVID-19 exposure and infection are excluded.
* Active Hazard Duty Pay (AHDP) of P86.4 million. AHDP is pegged at P136.36/day. Around 4,800 health workers did not receive their AHDP for the period of Dec. 20, 2020 to June 2021.
* Meals, Accommodation and Transportation (MAT) Allowance deficiency of P115.2 million pegged at P24,000 per health worker for the period of Sept. 15, 2020 to Dec. 19, 2020.
Total amount of DOH unpaid benefits to PGH health workers is P291.6 million, they said.
The union said all PGH workers should get the benefits, not just those working directly with COVID-19 patients.
“As a COVID referral center, we are all exposed and at-risk to the virus and we do not subscribe to the COVID and non-COVID dichotomy. We say everyone should get the benefits,” Faurillo added.
PGH has seen a steep increase in COVID-19 admissions since the last week of July, prompting it to increase bed allocation and recently, to close some of its services such as the out-patient department, elective surgeries, and its emergency room department to focus on the care of COVID-19 cases.
The DOH said Thursday that the Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) for the P311 million-worth of SRAs has now been distributed to its Centers for Health Development (CHDs).
The funds will benefit an additional 20,208 health care workers, the department said.
These funds transferred to the CHDs will then be released to their respective local government units and private health facilities in the next few days.
The P311 million is the first batch of fund transfers for the grant of SRA to hospitals and health facilities that had earlier submitted an additional list of eligible health workers.
Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega told the health care workers groups not to worry because they will soon download more SRA funds for the rest of the workers and that they are now coordinating with local government units and private hospitals through the CHDs.
“We are appealing with the hospitals and health facilities to help their CHDs in submitting requirements. Our Centers for Health Development are ready to guide you. Help each other,” Vega said.
Also on Thursday, Senator Juan Edgardo Angara reminded the DOH that apart from the SRA, health workers are entitled to hazard allowance as frontliners in the battle against COVID-19.
The senator said health workers, including the nurses should be provided with the hazard allowance already using the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers, which was authored by his father, the late former Senate president Edgardo Angara, as the legal basis.
Angara brought up the issue of the hazard allowance after it was noted during the Senate Blue Ribbon committee hearings on the use of funds by the DOH that the grant of SRA to health workers ended when the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act or Bayanihan 2 expired last June 30.
Citing Section 21 of Republic Act 7305 or the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers, Angara said that during this pandemic government health frontliners are entitled to hazard allowance equivalent to at least 25 percent of the monthly basic salary of health workers receiving salary grade 19 and below.
They also must get 5 percent for health workers with salary grade 20 and above, he said.
Angara, the chairman of the Senate committee on finance, emphasized that the grant of SRA to private and public health workers should continue even after the expiration of Bayanihan 2 for as long as the state of national emergency as declared by President Duterte is in place.
“They were saying SRA expired with Bayanihan 2, which we don’t agree with. There’s liberal approach and we have spoken to some legal personalities and it’s sad that those tasked to watch and take care of our health workers, they were the ones not in favor of giving these allowances,” he said.
Many health workers are up in arms over the delays in the release of their benefits, including the SRA since last year.