16,000 COVID-19 frontliners remain unpaid

MANILA: More than 16,000 Filipino medical frontliners like nurses and doctors who have repeatedly been hailed by the government as “new heroes,” have not been paid especially their hazard pay in the campaign against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, based on a Senate hearing.

Administration Senator Pia Cayetano made the revelation as she defended before her colleagues the proposed budget for 2021 of the Department of Health (Doh)which has been under heavy fire for alleged scandals to prevent the rapid spread of the virus.

“There is no more funding,” Cayetano admitted, referring to a special law called the

Bayanihan as One Act passed by Congress which gave special powers and funding to President Rodrigo Duterte to cope with the pandemic.

Cayetano said the unpaid more than 16,000 healthcare workers were new hires who were recruited in campaign to help prevent an alarming spike in the number of COVID-19 infections in the country.

She also admitted about 86,000 frontliners have been paid their hazard pay before the DOH ran out of funds for the remaining 16,000 health workers.

Earlier, President Duterte issued an order granting a “special risk allowance” for the medical frontliners which should not reach more than $100 a month for such workers.

Opposition Senator Francis Pangilinan urged the government to continue funding the hazard pay and other benefits for such workers as he pointed out: “We do not want to get into the bureaucratic quagmire where some of the frontliners who fell and died have not received the support that was due them.”

Senators vowed to sponsor a resolution allocating a total of more than $ 2 million for the unpaid hazard pay of the 16,000 frontliners.

Meanwhile, Senator Richard Gordon, also the chairman of the Philippine Red Cross ( PRC), announced they would soon start conducting saliva tests he described as a cheaper and faster alternative in tracing COVID cases that is waiting approval by the health department.

“It would probably cost $40 or even less,” Gordon said, explaining that the saliva test needs neither a specimen collector and skilled professional nor expensive collection vials as well as swab kits.

Processing time for saliva samples, he said, is shorter as it takes only three hours compared to the swat test that takes six to seven hours.