Small Town Lottery (STL) agents—kubrador, kabo, rebisador—should get the maximum financial assistance for hospitalization and other medical-related needs. They fully deserve this benefit.
Data from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) shows there are more or less 320,000 agents of the current 82 Authorized STL Agents (ASA) operating nationwide. This is a big work force helping to generate income for the government. They are the reasons behind government’s capacity to fund health programs and free medical services to the indigents and poor Filipinos.
The majority of these agents cannot get decent jobs for lack of education. Many of them are senior citizens, and some are persons with disabilities (PWD) but still working hard every day to feed their families.
Some ASAs, like the Batangas Enhanced Technology Systems Inc. (BETS), take care of their agents. Unfortunately, some of them don’t extend any health benefits benefits.
Oftentimes, I get calls from STL agents asking for assistance from the PCSO to pay for their hospital bills. Of course, there are some charges in a patient’s bill that the PCSO can’t shoulder, such as professional fee and room payment, unless the patient is an indigent.
I talked to some BETS people and I learned about how this ASA takes care of its agents. The STL operator has its own medical group called AnaKalusugan and its own “Klinika ng Bayan” in Santo Tomas, Batangas.
The clinic caters to all BETS agents who need medical attention for free. Every agent, doctors said, have their free maintenance medicines, especially the seniors suffering from hypertension, diabetes and other health problems. The PCSO does not have a maintenance medicine program except for free medicines for extreme cases such as cancer.
Doctors of AnaKalusugan admitted they realized they were in a community and they have to extend medical attention, too, to local people in need, not only to BETS agents and their dependents.
These doctors want to share the good practices of the group to all ASA operating in the country. They want to bring AnaKalusugan to them and then eventually to the people in other communities.
I suggest there should be a memorandum of agreement between the PCSO and all ASAs to ensure that all the agents who really work hard should get maximum medical
assistance.
Why am I proposing this? Because these agents collect every single peso from house to house, and from bettors everywhere. They are frontline personnel who are helping generate for the government more than P2 billion a month in STL revenues.
This is the best way to practice the saying, “charity begins at home.”
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