Who’s the boss at Lung Center?

The officer-in-charge designated by the Department of Health (DOH) to temporarily replace dismissed Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP) executive director Dr. Fernando Melendres failed to assume his post yesterday.

Despite bearing a department order signed by DOH Secretary Manuel Dayrit designating him as the OIC of the government specialty hospital, Assistant Secretary Juanito Rubio was turned away by Melendres saying the Malacañang and DOH move to dismiss him was irregular.

In a phone interview, Melendres, appointed to the LCP top post in 1999 by then President Joseph Estrada, stressed that his talk with Rubio was amicable and not combative. Both knew each other, having met and worked together in the past. Melendres is an uncle of Joy Melendres, mother of one of Estrada’s children.

He said Rubio, accompanied by Dr. Criselda Abesamis, a DOH director and designated as Rubio’s assistant, left peacefully and went back to the DOH where according to his sources, they conferred with Dayrit.

Dayrit and Rubio could not be reached for comment as of press time yesterday.

The other day, Melendres bared anomalies in the DOH such as the missing P40 million of the LCP’s allocated budget for its National Volunteer Blood Services Program (NVBSP).

Melendres said the LCP was allotted a P22-million budget for the NVBSP in 2001 but only P1.6 million was turned over to them by the DOH. In 2002, Melendres said, the LCP was supposed to receive another P22 million allotted for the same program but they received nothing. – Rainier Allan Ronda