The Philippines is staring at a health crisis as the front-line workers in private hospitals have threatened to go on mass resignation over low salaries.
The health care workers have warned of “medical lockdown” in protest against low salaries and lack of benefits after a spike in cases due to the deadly and infectious Delta variant of a corona-virus pandemic.
Head of the University of Santo Tomas Hospital Employees Association, Donnel John Siason, lamented the lack of benefits describing that they were not at par with their counterparts from the government under Bayanihan 2 Act. The law which has been approved by Congress empowered authorities to take all the necessary measures in a national emergency to blunt the impact of the pandemic on the people and on the economy.
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Siason said under the law, doctors, nurses and other personnel in the “private health sector are entitled to life insurance, paid residence, free transportation, free food, hazard pay and medical allowance.”
Head of the St. Luke’s Medical Centre Employees Association, Jao Clumia, said that the hospital used to give the members free food, but he said they stopped receiving such benefits when management told them they ran out of funds.
Clumia said at least 10 other hospitals complained they were “running out of funds” due to the failure of the state-run Philippine Health Insurance Corporation to pay the bills incurred by patients covered by the agency.
No estimate of the total number of private health workers who threatened to go on “medical lockdown” through mass resignation was available.
Authorities have placed Metro Manila and other neighboring provinces, as well as other areas outside the metropolis under lockdown, called enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) from Aug.6 to 20 to help contain the spread of the Delta variant.
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Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, appealed to the medical front liners not to proceed with their plan and warned that such a move would cripple the country’s healthcare system threatened by a spike in infections blamed on the Delta variant.
According to Vergeire they were ready to sit down with the protesting workers to discuss and resolve the issues involved and her appeal came after the Department of Health on Saturday reported that it logged a new record of 14,249 confirmed cases that brought the national tally to 1.7 million. The authorities said death toll soared to more than 30,000 from 233 new fatalities.
Congresswoman Stella Quimpo of suburban Marikina City in Metro Manila disclosed that under Bayanihan 2 Act a total of $36 million have remained unspent and the funds could be used to help solve the plight of the workers.
According to Quimpo Congress has no power to realign the funds but pointed out that President could exercise such power to help the workers. Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello agreed with Quimpo as he said, “We have to see, find, and how it will be given to them. There is no substitute in giving the workers what is due. It is legal and it is our obligation to give these to them.”
