Lawyer Giovanni Tianero, Mandaue Budget officer, says they already used up half of the P200M budget for COVID-19 vaccination program. | Mary Rose Sagarino
MANDAUE CITY, Philippines — The Mandaue City government has already used up half of the P200 million allotted for its COVID-19 vaccination program.
Lawyer Giovanni Tianero, Mandaue City Budget Officer, said that the city had already used up P100 million of the budget.
It can be recalled that the city government reserved P200 million to be used for the procurement of vaccine to complement what the national government would provide to the city. However, the national government has already assured the LGUs of enough supply and allocation.
Tianero said there was no need to realign the budget because even before the supplemental was passed, it was not specifically identified for the procurement of vaccines but for the city’s vaccination program and other COVID-19 related response.
He said that the biggest part of the used budget was spent for the supplies and meals of the personnel in all vaccination centers which accounted for almost P50 million and the salaries of the vaccination personnel with over P30 million.
He said that the over P30 million budget would be good until December for the currently hired personnel.
There are 18 doctors, 45 nurses and almost 70 contractual personnel, some of these are from the City Health Office (CHO), that were placed at the city’s four vaccination sites.
Aside from this, Tianero said the budget for the procurement of stay at home kits or relief goods that were given to families who tested positive for the virus, and those, who were part of the contact tracing who were placed under lockdown, was also from the P200 million budget.
He said that the meals of the patients at the city’s two isolation centers were also taken from the budget.
Tianero said right now the city had stopped hiring medical workers.
He, however, that if the CHO and Vaccine Operations Center (VOC) would open another vaccination center and would ask for additional personnel then they would hire again.
Earlier, Lawyer Lizer Malate, VOC head, said they would probably open additional vaccination sites if the volume of vaccine supply would arrive and also thousands of first dosers would be expected to come back for their second doses that would mean that they would be catering double the number of individuals during a regular vaccination day.
Currently, the city’s four vaccination sites namely the Mandaue City Cultural and Sports Complex, University of Cebu Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue (UCLM) campus new building, Pacific Mall, and J Centre Mall can accommodate at least 800 individuals per day.
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