Reaction to editorial

This is in connection with the editorial published by your newspaper last October 5, 2019 pertaining to the issue involving the Isidro C. Kintanar Memorial Hospital in Argao.

The Provincial Government of Cebu has carefully studied the outsourcing of medical personnel, and has considered the interest of the medical professionals who will be affected. We understand their gripe but the decision to outsource medical personnel was based on our aim to provide our constituency with better health facilities and efficient service, at a lesser cost.

Government is a public trust. A bloated bureaucracy where government offices are manned by inefficient, overpaid and self-entitled public workers is no longer acceptable by this administration. The Provincial Government performed due diligence in order to determine the most efficient way of managing its resources and facilities.

The governor had to make a choice. That choice is to be efficient thru outsourcing.

The reasons are simple. For example, if the Department of Health (DOH) guidelines provide for a certain hospital to be manned by five nurses, and one nurse absents herself for a long period of time, and another goes on sick leave, it would be difficult for the hospital administrator to immediately fill up the vacancies for the day under the regular set up of employment. It would take three long weeks to find a competent replacement.

With the outsourcing mechanism in place, the responsibility of ensuring that a hospital’s medical posts are manned for twenty-four hours rests solely on the contractor or agency. With the outsourcing, we are able to fill all the positions needed in all our district and primary hospitals corresponding to their plantilla requirement.

Just as important, the outsourcing mechanism being implemented allows the Province to save P31 million a month or more than P360 million in a year. The amount can be used to improve the facilities of district and provincial hospitals and to purchase more medicines for its constituents.

A different approach, albeit more efficient, is not wrong. With the previous set-up implemented by the previous administration, there were still instances when a district or provincial hospital lacked doctors or medical personnel.

The outsourcing mechanism addresses the recurring complaints against inhospitable and irate medical personnel who can now be easily replaced if they continue with their unprofessional approach.

The erroneous figures that you have published based on an unverified social media post points at an irresponsible and lazy approach to journalism. This post was even made as a basis for your editorial last October 5, 2019 without verifying the figures, exhibiting an utter lack of fact-checking and verification on your part.

If diligence on your part was indeed performed, then you would have inquired with us for the data required for your editorial.

It is not true that a Medical Officer III (MO3) is receiving below P50,000 as what was posted by former mayor Stanley Caminero. For transparency, here are the benefits for such position, as provided by law:

Basic Monthly - P 43,439

Night Premium - P 4,343.90

13th Month - P 3,619.92

5 days leave - P 822.71

In addition to the aforementioned benefits, they will also receive the following which were not enjoyed by them under their previous contracts of service or job orders:

SSS = P1,600.00

PhilHealth = P 550.31

Estate Insurance = P 30.00

HDMF = P 100.00

Easily, that is a total of P 54,505.53 to be received by one with an MO3 position. (To be continued)

Atty. Frank Eduard C. Dinsay V

Chief of staff of Gov. Gwen Garcia