Contractors abandoned VMMC intensive care unit expansion?

Contractors have apparently abandoned the expansion and renovation of the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) medical intensive treatment unit (MITU), a source said yesterday.

The project started on June 10, 2013 and was supposed to be completed in “180 calendar days,” but until now ailing war veterans and their dependents have to put up with crowded conditions in the unit, a hospital employee who asked not to be identified said.

“It (MITU) is very vital in a hospital. This is where critical patients are being confined,” he told The Star.

VMMC director Nona Legaspi vehemently denied the allegations, saying the employee “was just trying to malign her reputation.”

Legaspi was appointed hospital director during the term of former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who is now under hospital arrest at the VMMC while she is on trial for plunder.

Another source said Legaspi considers the complaint a non-issue since the expansion of the MITU will be continued this year. She will reportedly retire this year, the source added.

The MITU’s renovation and expansion was supposed to be finished by December 2013, but a revised contract showed that the project completion period was amended to 225 days or until January 2014.

The employee, however, said the project was left unfinished and the VMMC’s officials are now rehabilitating the hospital’s pathology department.

Legaspi “came from the department of pathology. We hope that they should finish the ‘critical section’ first before starting another one,” he said.

The MITU is a circular building with eight rooms and the expansion would give the unit 21 more rooms.

The employee also alleged that the budget for the MITU expansion project was slashed from P30 million to P8 million “for still unknown reasons.”

The VMMC was constructed in 1995 as a gift of the United States to Filipino soldiers who displayed heroism during World War II.