JUST like the Cagayan de Oro City-owned JR Borja General Hospital (JRBGH), Mayor Oscar Moreno said he and his team of candidates running for Misamis Oriental’s top posts will work to rebuild the province’s hospital/health care system that’s abandoned by the incumbent Capitol administration in favor of a job order (JO)/casual worker recruitment system.
“What we continue to do for JRBGH, we will do for the district hospitals in Gingoog City and Magsaysay town. (During my tenure as governor in the mid-2000s), we fixed the emergency facilities in Gingoog City Hospital…the Provincial Capitol is obligated to develop the hospitals in Gingoog City and the towns of Claveria, Initao, Magsaysay, Balingasag, Manticao, Talisayan, and Alubijid..but the funding instead went to Misor Cares,” Moreno said last Friday.
During his ‘Gikan sa Katawhan, Ibalik sa Katawhan’ program, Moreno said the national government’s decision to allocate P10 million to JRBGH was in recognition of the hospital’s efforts to improve their services and facilities which were sorely neglected during the 12-year tenure of his predecessor, the late mayor Vicente Emano. Under the Moreno administration, JRBGH became a referral center for birthing services to pregnant women residents of Misamis Oriental.
Aside from building additional wards to house Covid-19 patients in the city and province, Mayor Moreno said JRBGH will offer dialysis services next month. The Moreno administration will also complete the construction of additional hospitals in Barangays Bulua and Tablon and sustain the expansion of the Center for Emerging-Reemerging Infectious Diseases facility it donated to the Department of Health.
The Moreno administration allocated an annual budget of more than P1 billion to fund Cagayan de Oro City’s health care system, hospitals, and barangay health centers as well as more than P200 million worth of services such as PhilHealth coverage to indigent families in the city. In sharp contrast, the incumbent administration at the Provincial Capitol poured their Internal Revenue Allotment into Misor Cares which Mayor Moreno said was focused on hiring JOs as recommended by local leaders.
“The local governments (like the province) were granted taxation powers and their IRA share under the Local Government Code to fund devolved services like health and education. So LGUs like Misamis Oriental cannot expect the national government to do everything for them because the DOH will complain since it is obligated to 17 regions in the country and every region has a medical center,” Moreno said.
Instead of modernizing Misamis Oriental’s health care and hospital system, Moreno said the incumbent Capitol administration allocated resources to hire JOs and casual workers even during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“A local government’s capacity to provide devolved health care services is dependent in part to the local chief executive’s commitment. They allocated revenues for hiring JOs and casual workers, what did they set aside for PhilHealth coverage, for hospitals. In Misamis Oriental now, every barangay captain has five to eight JOs, how much will the LGU spend for that,” Moreno said. (Stephen Capillas of City Information Office)
