Digong in Cebu next week to meet military, cops, others

President Rodrigo Duterte will be in town next week to meet with the local leaders, military and police officials from the Visayas and Mindanao.

Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Lloyd Dino said the president will lead the unveiling of the marker of OPAV-initiated Malasakit Center at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC).

After the VSMMC event, Dino said that Duterte will also meet with the military and the police in a joint-command conference and inauguration of Montero SUVs for the police in the region.

Duterte is also expected to meet with the mayors from the Visayas and Mindanao in a meeting organized by the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG).

Fayette Riñen, acting regional director of the Philippine Information Agency-7, said that there is no official schedule of the Presidential visit yet.

As of yesterday, Riñen said the Media Accreditation and Relations Office has not yet coordinated with them but, normally, she said PIA will call for a press briefing about presidential visits, a day before the event.

For the Malasakit Center, Dino said that it is a valentine’s gift of the president to the Visayan people, especially to the poor patients in government hospitals who need financial aid from various government agencies.

“I thank the president for his positive response to our invitation to spend a pre-valentine’s date with the Cebuano people (through) the Malasakit program. President Rody showed his interest about the Malasakit Center our office has initiated when I discussed it to him during his visit (during) Cardinal Vidal’s wake,” Dino said in a press statement.

The president will be joined with the heads of various government agencies and government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) that have collaborated with OPAV in making the project possible despite limited resources.

VSMMC will be the pilot hospital where systems and policies will be laid and studied for smooth replication of the program to other public hospitals in the Visayas.

Dino added that the Malasakit Center will provide convenience to family members or relatives of patients of government-run hospitals in processing request for financial assistance for the patients’ continued care, medication, and medical procedure, among others.

Duterte visited Cebu three times last year. First was the ground breaking ceremony of the P27 billion Cebu Cordova Link Expressway on March 2.

On June 4, he visited the members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines-Central Command at the Mactan Ebuen Air Base in Lapu-Lapu City. He was also here when he visited the wake of Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal last October 22.