The Department of Budget and Management has released an additional P888.12 million to fund the Special Risk Allowance (SRA) of over 100,000 eligible public and private healthcare workers who are directly catering to or are in contact with COVID-19 patients from December 20, 2020 to June 30, 2021.
In a statement released Friday evening, the DBM said the amount was charged from the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund and Unprogrammed Appropriations under the 2021 budget.
“With this, the total additional funds released by the DBM for the SRA
pursuant to Administrative Order No. 42 as of date have reached P1.2 billion. An additional amount of P407.08 million will be charged against the FY 2021 Contingent Fund to complete the SRAs for an estimated 117,926 HCWs not to exceed P5,000 per month for the covered period and shall be on top of existing compensations as prescribed under the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers and the DOH-DBM Joint Circular No. 1, series of 2016,” the department said.
“Rest assured that the DBM will facilitate the prompt release of the funds for the SRA to ensure that all eligible healthcare workers will receive their rightful benefits.”
Healthcare workers on Friday called on the government to prioritize payments of delayed benefits before building a memorial wall depicting them as modern-day heroes.
“The best gesture is to give the appropriate benefits to our health care workers because that will truly show we are being valued.,” Dr. Maricar Limpin, president of Philippine College of Physicians, said in an interview with ABS-CBN’s Teleradyo.
Several medical frontliners staged protests and threatened to file mass resignations as many have yet to receive pandemic benefits promised by the government.
The government will spend P2 million to P5 million to construct the memorial wall at the Libingan ng mga Bayani to honor health workers who have died while working on the front lines.
“That's a small amount. But that memorial will always symbolize their heroism… the expense for it is priceless,” National Task Force Against COVID-19 chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. had said.
But Limpin urged the government to keep its promise.
“We are not demanding a big amount. In fact, they're the ones who promised to give that amount. When they say something, they should fulfill it,” she said.
The government had said health workers would be entitled to meal, accommodation and transportation allowance, SRA and active duty hazard pay.
Public and private healthcare workers who are in direct contact with COVID-19 patients are eligible to receive SRA while only medical personnel in the public sector are qualified to receive hazard pay.
While the Alliance of Health Workers also welcomed the construction of a memorial wall, its president said the funding could be used for the payment of their unpaid benefits.
“They should pay attention to the health and safety and protection and welfare of health workers while they are alive,” AHW president Robert Mendoza said in Filipino on Teleradyo.
The Philippines logged more than 2 million in coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a fifth of those recorded in the past month alone.
Medical staff are overwhelmed and 103 have died during the pandemic, among some 33,500 coronavirus fatalities overall.
The Filipino Nurses United (FNU) called on the government to prioritize the people’s health and health workers’ welfare in the 2022 national budget deliberation especially since this pandemic may still extend to two years as projected by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III himself during the recent budget hearing.
The proposed COVID Response budget of P19 billion for next year is way below the previous year’s budget, which proved grossly inadequate and has cost lives to be sacrificed because of poor COVID-response and an extremely burdened health system near collapse with health workers’ lives and safety put at great risk.
The FNU expressed frustration because the proposed health budget does not include program funds for SRA and other benefits for nurses and other health workers as well as allocation for purchase of vaccines for the anticipated “booster shots” next year.
The proposed COVID response budget for 2022 is a glaring confirmation that the DOH, far from being the steward of health, in fact, has no deep regard nor respect for nurses’ and other health workers’ rights; neither cognizant of the extreme hardships and sacrifices of the frontline health workers in the COVID-19 fight, the FNU said.
“Again, we decry the proposed P19 billion COVID response budget for 2022 as too small for the gargantuan task to respond to the people’s health needs and to respectably compensate our health workers who continue to risk their lives and safety in this time of public health emergency,” the FNU said.
On the other hand, the proposed government plan to spend P2 million to P5 million to put up a memorial wall for health workers who died of COVID-19 smacks of a cheap ploy to cover its failed COVID response and shows insensitivity to the actual needs of the living health heroes clamoring for their long overdue unpaid benefits, the group said.
Duque told the House Thursday that while the COVID-19 pandemic has yet to be contained, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has slashed his department’s budget for the allowances and benefits of health workers.
Speaking at the House of Representatives' budget deliberations, Duque said the DBM allocated only P19.68 billion for its COVID-19 initiatives or health system resilience projects in 2022 although the DOH's original proposal was P73.99 billion.
Marikina City Rep. Stella Quimbo said the DBM-approved amount “seems small for the government's COVID-19 response.”
“We originally proposed P73.99 billion, P50.41 billion of which will be for the meals, accommodation and transportation and life insurance of frontliners," Duque said.
Duque agreed with Quimbo that the agency's budget reduction explains why no funds were allotted for the allowances and benefits of health care workers in the proposed DOH budget.
Duque earlier said the funds for the benefits of medical frontliners are covered by the proposed Bayanihan 3 bill, which is still pending at the Senate, as there were no funds for the special risk allowance (SRA) of health workers in the 2022 budget.
DOH director Larry Cruz, meanwhile, said that of the P311 million released by the Department of Budget and Management last week, P308 billion was already disbursed to various health facilities.
In a separate statement, Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega said 99 percent of the budget has been disbursed.
"The P311 million is for the first batch of eligible health care workers who did not receive their SRA. We have already requested an additional budget for SRA that will cover another batch of eligible healthcare workers. We are looking forward to a favorable action by the Department of Budget and Management," Vega said.