The Health Department is facing a storm inadvertently created by Secretary Francisco Duque III. The Health chief ignited a firestorm of controversy after the Commission on Audit (COA)flagged the agency for numerous “deficiencies” in the use of a P67.3-billion fund, which undermined the timely and efficient response to the pandemic last year.
Perhaps sucked into the conspiracy vortex, Duque sees the COA’s 2020 Consolidated Annual Audit Report as venom that tears his organization apart. He perceives the report that found deficiencies in the agency’s use of its Covid response fund as morale buster for Department of Health (DOH) personnel.
“I think COA should also consider that we are not operating under normal circumstances. We’re operating under a state of public health emergency,” Duque said in a congressional hearing. “Winarak na ninyo kami. Winarak ninyo ang dangal ng DOH. Winarak ninyo ang lahat ng mga kasama dito,” he added.
From COA: “The Consolidated Annual Audit Report for FY 2020 of the Department of Health contains observations and findings made by the Commission on Audit on the utilization of the budget by the DOH. Accompanying the observations and findings are the recommendations made by the auditors for the management of DOH to address the observation and findings. These are part of the audit process, which allows the audited agency to comply with the recommendations and rectify any deficiencies. The Report itself does not mention any findings by the auditors of funds lost to corruption. Of the P67.3 billion, P42.4 billion consisted of fund transfers to procurement/implementing partner-agencies without the required documentation. There is no finding that this amount cannot be accounted for.”
Most government officials get an Audit Observation Memorandum from COA. As this is mostly procedural in nature, all they need to do is answer it, or justify their transactions. It’s so easy for Duque to clear the DOH’s “ruined honor,” to use his words. Just submit to COA the needed documents that justify or clarify questioned transactions.
As the issue has been magnified on social media, what the people “see” are deficiencies and questionable DOH transactions. Senator Richard J. Gordon, chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, called for a hearing on the alleged deficiencies in management of the DOH Covid-19 funds following complaints from health-care workers (HCWs) regarding the delay in the issuance of their benefits such as the active hazard duty pay and special risk allowance, among others.
Gordon said they focused initially on the hazard pay and special risk allowance of HCWs deployed in the Covid-19 response, given widespread complaints of health frontliners in both the public and private hospitals that they did not receive these, despite being mandated by the Bayanihan to Heal as One law.
“We are calling this hearing because this is a very serious matter and we cannot just turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to this issue. Some of our health workers are not getting the right benefits and this problem has become so grave that they now mull mass resignation over lack of benefits. Not only are our health workers getting sick and dying of Covid-19; they are also demoralized,” Gordon said.
While questioning DOH officials, Gordon discovered why the health-care workers’ benefits were not given on time. The Department of Budget and Management only released funds to DOH five days before the lapse of Bayanihan 1!
Gordon snapped: “We are fighting a medical war. No government worth its salt should ever allow its soldiers, the medical workers in this case, to go to war without adequate support and compensation.”
In June, the DOH announced that the P9 billion funds for the new tranche of SRA for health workers have been released to the agency’s regional offices. Gordon said the responsibility of Secretary Duque does not stop in releasing the money. The Health chief, he said, has to make sure that the money reaches the intended recipients.
A wise man once said, “attitude reflects leadership.” It is a leader’s job to create an environment that promotes good morale. In the case of the DOH, the lack of knowledge by the leadership of frontline frustrations became a large part of the problem. Leaders can’t address issues they are not aware of, and, in the case of the DOH chief, he needs to communicate with health-care workers for him to know their true perspectives and feelings.
In the time of the pandemic, our health-care workers continually risk their lives to keep us safe. We can’t thank them enough for their hard work, selflessness, and compassion during these difficult times. The least we can do is to give them adequate compensation without delay.
1 comment
My comment pertains a different topic.
Everytime I view the BusinessMirror website I get frustrated. There are many ways to slow down page loading: two of these I observed in the BM website is big pictures and a long, long homepage. The large pictures do not pose a big problem to the bandwith but loading a long homepage containing news as far back as 5 days ago with pictures
greatly eats bandwith, making loading slow down.
If BM wants to show news as far back as 5 days ago, it can put links such as “News 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 days ago”
There are so many current news and items I want to read but are “covered” by ancient news, I just give up. The old BM website 2 years ago is much, much better.