Filipino Nurses United (FNU) Secretary General Jocelyn Andamo said they will push through with their protest on September 1, Friday, to assert the demands of health workers for their unreleased special risk allowance (SRA) as corruption and negligence issues in the Department of Health and the Duterte administration cost lives of health workers.
FNU said it is imperative that the government equally distribute SRAs to all health workers. Health workers from different hospitals have been constantly protesting for their demands.
“It’s still on. We are just discussing in what forms our mass actions will be. But definitely, there will be protest actions,” Andamo added.
Andamo exposed that the P311 million released for only 20,000 health workers is not sufficient and that the provision of SRA under Bayanihan laws must be allocated even for health workers who do not come into direct contact with COVID-19 patients as there are others who are at risk for working in hospitals “where the virus is airborne.”
In a press statement, the DOH Undersecretary Rosario Vergeire said that certain laws mandate the SRA is only allocated for healthcare workers catering to COVID-infected patients
Vergeire further states that they have already requested more funds from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). Data on the 2022 budget, however, shows that P30.46 billion will be allocated to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) whereas less than P10 billion is to be distributed among some COVID hospitals and laboratories.
Government critics and health workers also demand that the incompetent Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, who has complained of losing sleep, to immediately resign as the latter threaten the Duterte administration with an impending mass resignation if their demands are not meant.
However, despite massive calls for Duque’s resignation, President Duterte said he will stand with Duque even if he is alone. Critics point out that Duque’s incompetence is just a symptom of Duterte’s “criminal negligence.”
Without clear plans and an insufficient budget for 2022, Andamo is hoping that lawmakers become more proactive in responding and heeding their demands, especially as the group thinks “verbal commitment or promise is [not] enough for it [Bayanihan laws] to be implemented.”
In St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City, 23 emergency room nurses have resigned affecting the facility’s manpower and capacity. Officials say they already went abroad where the salary is better.
More than one year of an unresolved pandemic and the current surge in Delta variant cases, more nurses are now inclined to resign due to the lack of benefits, high health security risk, fatigue, and the Duterte government’s negligence.
Featured image courtesy of Rappler.
