Cebu City mulls P10K incentive for medical augmentation force

health worker | STOCK PHOTO

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella is asking the Sangguniang Panglungsod (City Council) to allot a budget of P54 million to help the medical workers deployed in Cebu City to augment the medical health care system.

Labella said 1,800 privately practicing health workers had offered their services to Cebu City hospitals to augment the weakening health force,

However, these health workers are earning only half the regular medical workers in the city.

“Atong nakita nga daghan natong gipatabang nga private medical workers nga atong gihangyo nga moaugment sa atong private hospitals, pero ilang namatngonan, almost katunga ra ilang madawat kumpara sa government medical workers” said the mayor.

(What we see is that many of our private medical workers, whom we have tapped to help our private hospitals, earn less than half of what government medical workers do.)

These private medical workers include doctors, medical interns, nurses, medical technologists, radio technologists, and respiratory technologists, who have been deployed to the privately-managed hospitals to augment the weakening health force due to the pandemic.

Labella said the city heard the clamor of these medical workers who sacrificed their private practice to help the hospitals in these trying times.

The mayor said he had asked the local finance committee and the City Council to see if the previous Supplemental Budgets could be realigned for this purpose.

The city has released three supplemental budgets for the year, including the Supplemental Budget No. 3, a total of P1.9 billion to be used for the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the mayor said part of the budget had remained unspent, and this could be used to help the medical professionals, instead.

“Dyes mil ni kada buwan sulod sa tulo ka buwan. (This is P10,000 per month for three months.) This is to boost their morale. I already met with the local finance committee to look into the possibility of providing aid for them,” said Labella.

The mayor said he hoped that the City Council would approve this realignment or the local finance committee could find another source, so that the medical workers helping the city’s fight against the pandemic might be encouraged by this aid./dbs