About 90 percent of the Covid-19 allowance to health-care workers (HCW) has been disbursed already and dropped broad hints it might take “another year” to resume disbursement, the Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday said.
In a television interview, Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa admitted that “many” are yet to receive their allowance.
“This year we allocated P19 billion and the amount of money that the DBM has released to us was about P4 billion already,” Herbosa disclosed.
The health chief added: “Because as you heard, it is P63 billion that we have arrears since 2021. So it will take another year, with another P22 billion in budget in the 2024 General Appropriations Act and releases by DBM because, and this is the haymaker, it’s under unprogrammed funds.
So it is only dependent on the taxes and savings that the government makes and then it will release the money to distribute to the health-care workers.”
He explained that it is uncertain “to be released when the taxation is low, it depends on the taxation and the savings.”
Herbosa said that he had already requested for another tranche to be released so that the HCWs can enjoy their Christmas.
“This is what we call continuing appropriations. So the fact that we have not yet disbursed it this year, we can move it on to 2024 and still continue to disburse it,” he added.