DAVAO CITY — A health workers’ alliance said it would give the Department of Health (DOH) until August 26 to pay them overdue benefits for serving during the coronavirus pandemic. The Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) pushed back its deadline for the DOH to respond and threatened to go on strike if the benefits were not paid by Friday, August 27, according to the group’s president, Robert Mendoza.
“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.
Mendoza stated that health workers were dissatisfied with the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing into the DOH’s spending of pandemic funds on Wednesday, August 25, because it focused solely on the special risk allowance (SRA) and did not address other benefits.
“It’s possible public and private health workers will unite to show the government their dismay,” he said adding that, “They are not paying all the benefits, and health workers are dismayed. They owe us a lot.”
The government’s COVID-19 hazard pay is for public health workers, but the SRA is for both public and private health care personnel. The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said on Wednesday that P311.79 million had been issued, but only for the long-overdue SRAs.
However, Mendoza claims that the Department of Health has yet to release the P38,000 in meal and transportation allowances, as well as the P3,000 monthly active duty hazard pay, for the period December 2020 to June 2021.
Also on Thursday, the All U.P. Workers Union-Manila decried the non-payment of COVID-19 benefits under Bayanihan Act 2 to approximately 4,800 health personnel of the Philippine General Hospital, the country’s largest and leading COVID referral center.
The union lambasted the DOH for its chronic neglect, gross incompetence, and lack of empathy for the exhausting and dangerous work that frontline health workers have been subjected to since PGH was designated 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 advantages outlined in Republic Act 11494, also known as the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act, were referred to by the union. The DOH had not yet granted the following benefits 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.
According to them, the DOH owes P291.6 million in outstanding benefits to PGH employees. The group also stated that all PGH employees, not just those who work with Covid-19 patients, should be eligible for the benefits.
“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.
The Department of Health announced on Thursday that the P311 million Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) for SRAs has been distributed to its Centers for Health Development (CHDs). According to the agency, the funds will assist an additional 20,208 healthcare workers.
Within the next few days, the cash transferred to the CHDs will be disbursed to their relevant local government units and private health facilities.
The P311 million in the first round of fund transfers for SRA payments to hospitals and health facilities that had previously submitted an extra list of eligible health workers.
Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega assured the healthcare workers’ unions that more SRA funding will be downloaded shortly for the remaining workers and that the CHDs are currently collaborating with local government units and private hospitals.
“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.
Senator Juan Edgardo Angara also reminded the DOH on Thursday that, in addition to the SRA, health workers are entitled to hazard allowance as front liners in the fight against COVID-19. The senator stated that health workers, including nurses, should be paid with a hazard allowance, citing the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers, which was drafted by his father, former Senate President Edgardo Angara.
Angara raised the subject of the hazard allowance after it was revealed during Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings on the Department of Health’s usage of funds that the grant of SRA to health personnel terminated on June 30, when the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act or Bayanihan 2 expired.
According to Section 21 of Republic Act 7305, or the Magna Carta of Public Health Workers, government health frontline workers are entitled to a hazard allowance equivalent to at least 25% of the monthly basic salary of health workers in salary grade 19 and below during this pandemic.
They must also receive 5% for health workers with a salary grade of 20 or above, he said. The issuance of SRA to private and public health workers should continue even after the expiration of Bayanihan 2 for as long as President Duterte’s declared state of national emergency is in effect, according to Angara, the chairman of the Senate committee on finance.
“They were saying SRA expired with Bayanihan 2, which we don’t agree with. There’s a 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.
Since last year, many health workers have been outraged by the delays in receiving their benefits, particularly the SRA.
Demand on Duterte to increase pay to match that of cops
On National Heroes Day, as President Duterte lauded healthcare workers for their efforts in trying to combat COVID-19, a group urged him to double their pay, as he did for policemen.
“If President Duterte can double the salary of policemen, I hope that during the pandemic, he will have the political will to double the salary of our health workers,” said Mendoza, president of the Alliance of Health Workers, which has launched protests to demand the payment of long-overdue payments.
Mendoza claims that health workers have put their lives on the line to combat the coronavirus and save patients’ lives. “The President has referred to us as heroes, but only up to that point. We don’t get any help from the President of the Department of Health (DOH) when it comes to health, safety, or benefits,” Mendoza added.
On Monday, health workers and labor leaders warned that if the Palace continues to support controversial Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, they will have no choice but to remove him from office.
Workers at major hospitals staged simultaneous rallies on Monday, demanding that benefits promised to them under the Bayanihan law be released immediately.
The healthcare workers also urged that the Department of Health’s Center for Health Development (DOH-CHD) be abolished due to its failure to fulfill its responsibility to medical frontline personnel.
They claimed that the protests were simply a warm-up for their planned National Day of Action for Health Care Worker Protection in the first week of September.
Senator Joel Villanueva, meanwhile, has proposed that funding for the two special pay allowances for medical front-line workers be rolled over to the national budget for the following year.
In 2022, he also proposed a larger budget for this purpose, so that health workers might benefit financially.
Despite being exposed to the same hazards as their coworkers, he claims that present laws and fund constraints prevent certain types of contractual workers from receiving further pay for dangerous work. “The virus does not discriminate. Why does the government distinguish on who to pay or not?” he said.
A larger authorization for AHDP and SRA, according to Villanueva, would result in higher rates and cover more health workers, who should receive them more quickly under the new guidelines.
Under the Bayanihan legislation, the AHDP is given to public health workers, but the SRA is given to health workers in both public and private medical facilities. The maximum daily availment is P136 per day because a public health worker cannot receive more than P3,000 per month in AHDP, according to Villanueva.
The SRA’s monthly payout of the P5,000 maximum equates to around P227 daily remuneration for “COVID ward duties, which is one of the world’s most dangerous workplaces today,” he claimed.
Such pay rates, according to Villanueva, should now fluctuate in the same way that the virus has changed.
“The Senate, without a doubt, will collectively propose it once the supporting data are made available during the hearings for the 2022 national budget,” Villanueva added.
However, he believes that a “100% increase” in the SRA and hazard compensation could be a good place to start the conversation.
Up in mass protests
St. Luke’s Medical Center Global City, Metropolitan General Hospital, The Medical City, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Cardinal Santos Medical Center, and Calamba Medical Center unions joined the protests on Monday.
Workers have yet to get benefits under the Bayanihan 2 law, according to Jao Clumia, president of the St. Luke’s Medical Center Employees Association, as they marked along E. Rodriguez Avenue.
“The investigations held at both chambers of Congress have repeatedly identified the neglect of the Department of Health –Center for Health Development (DOH-CHD) and yet Secretary Francisco Duque and his clique have remained unresponsive to our demands,” he said.
Duque’s only words, according to Clumia, are excuses and finger-pointing.
“We have nothing to celebrate despite the holiday. Despite the rising pandemic, we have always been referred to as ‘modern heroes’ for our hard work and dedication, and now we are in the streets demanding benefits for all health care workers,” said Donell Siazon, union president of the University of Santo Tomas Hospital.
“We are outraged by the government’s disregard and systematic neglect of us.”
The demonstrators demanded that their SRA, meals, accommodation, and travel allowances, as well as life insurance and other benefits under Bayanihan 2, be released immediately and that all hospital personnel be covered by the SRA.
They also requested that Duque be removed from office.
The AHW also stated that reports have been obtained indicating that nurses at the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) have resigned in fear of the COVID-19 pandemic being replicated because health officials allegedly fail to address the still-growing number of COVID-19-infected healthcare workers.
“We fear that more fellow health workers will be resigning, not only from SPMC but to various hospitals across the country since they do not yet feel concrete and comprehensive measures of containment from the deadly virus in the country which will jeopardize their health and lives,” AHW president Robert Mendoza said in a statement.
