LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The province’s caretaker congressman assured the over 360-strong work force of the Benguet General Hospital (BeGH) there will be no displacement once the provincial government unit-run health facility is re-nationalized.
Anti-Crime and Terrorism through Community Involvement and Support (ACT-CIS) Party-list Rep. and Benguet caretaker congressman Eric Go Yap pointed out that BEGH’s proposed re-nationalization is primarily geared towards effectively and efficiently improving the delivery of health care services not only to the people of the province but also to patients from other localities wanting to seek medical attention from the health facility.
Yap, together with Gov. Melchor D. Diclas, attended a consultation with BeGH officials and employees and informed them that even ranking health officials and the provincial government are supportive of the immediate passage of House Bill (HB) 6171 which he authored that seeks to re-nationalize the health facility and increase its bed capacity from the current 100 beds to 200 beds to respond to the needs of an increasing number of patients wanting to be treated in the said hospital.
BeGH was established in 1971 by virtue of Republic Act (RA) 5955 and the said hospital was eventually turned over to the provincial government by virtue of RA 7160 or the Local Government Code that devolved health and social services from the national government to the local governments.
The neophyte lawmaker said that being a graduate of architecture, the structures are already good but there is still a need to pursue the provision of putting in place state-of-the-art units equipment and more work force to serve the increasing number of patients coming from the different parts of the province, and even some parts of the Ilocos and Cagayan Valley regions.
He appealed to the hospital’s current work force to appropriately deal with people seeking medical attention from the facility and for them to understand the feelings of those who are sick to abate further complaints that the workers are reportedly arrogant, among other negative accusations, considering that sick people deserve humane treatment from the assigned staff.
BeGH underwent the required rehabilitation and upgrading through a multi-million grant from the Japanese government implemented and completed in April 2000 before it operated as an economic enterprise in January 2006.
Yap underscored that aside from significantly increasing the work force and the provision of more sophisticated health equipment to the hospital and increasing its bed capacity, the hospital’s re-nationalization will also result to the upgrading of the salary scale of officials and personnel based on the standards of the health department wherein the starting salary of nurses will be based on Salary Grade (SG) 15 instead of the current SG 11.
The caretaker congressman also assured concerned stakeholders he will try to work out the passage of the proposed measure this year so that the same will be effective in the coming years and for the people to enjoy the delivery of quality health care services by the hospital.
By HENT
