House urged to check up on ‘irregularities’ in P8.1-B health project
AN “urgent” investigation into the alleged irregularities involving an P8.1 billion government health project is being sought at the House of Representatives.
Bayan Muna Partylist filed House Resolution 1978 urging the Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability to investigate the School-Based Barangay Health Station–Tamang Serbisyo para sa Kalusugan ng Pamilya (BHS-TSeKaP ) project.
“There is an urgent need for Congress to investigate the issue as such irregular projects and programs take away billions of pesos intended for the much-needed health services and harm the interest of the people,” the resolution said.
Based on data from the Department of Health (DOH) in 2015, the BHS “could not effectively deliver health services to the people because of perennial lack of personnel, medicines, equipment and supplies.”
A Commission on Audit’s (COA) Performance Audit Report dated December 2017 on the Health Facilities Enhancement Program of the DOH showed that “the project establishing 5,700 health stations in public schools in 2015 and 2016 was obstructed by ineligible and non-workable project sites that were not fully validated […] due to absence of specific guidelines.”
Based on the same COA report, the delay and non-completion of BHS in public schools “adversely affected the procurement and distribution of 5,000 TseKaP Packages amounting to P175 million intended for the BHS.”
While billions of public funds were allotted for the project, the people had “nothing but half-finished, dilapidated and unusable BHS,” the resolution said.
If the wasted P8.1 billion was used instead to “provide direct services in public hospitals and facilities or provide adequate equipment, supplies, medicine and personnel to existing BHS, it could have helped far more poor Filipinos,” it added.
According to the resolution, the irregularities of the project “showed the utter lack of concern and grave neglect of government officials for the health and welfare of the people especially the poor.”
The two-phased health project was implemented in public elementary schools under a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signed on January 16, 2016 by the DOH, Department of Education (DepEd), and Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) under then president Benigno Aquino III’s Kalusugan Pangkalahatan program. SAMANTHA TIO
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