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Nat’l Health Workers Day | Health workers
demand salary increase, end to contractualization
Photo by Anne Marxze D. Umil/Bulatlat
By ANNE MARXZE D.
UMIL
MANILA – Under the heat
of the scorching sun, health
workers, some just finished
long hours of work, marched
from the office of the
Department of Health to the
Chino Roces bridge carrying
banners bearing their long
time call: “Ipaglaban ang
nakabubuhay na sahod!”
(Fight for a living wage!) on
National Health Workers Day
on Monday, May 7.

They said that for the
past years, they have been
calling for a significant wage
increase but to no avail.
The last time they had
a wage increase was in
2016 when then President
Aquino signed Executive
Order No. 201 or the Salary
Standardization Law. The
Alliance of Health Workers
(AHW) said that under the
present administration of
President
Duterte,
their
salaries are not any more
sufficient to meet their basic
needs especially when the
government implemented the
Tax Reform for Acceleration
and Inclusion law (TRAIN
Law).
The group noted that with
the TRAIN law, their
salary’s buying capacity has
decreased by 23 percent.

“Health
workers
deserve a salary increase,”
said AHW president Robert
Mendoza. They are calling
for a P16, 000 ($308) national
minimum wage for public
and private hospitals. Health
workers in private hospitals,
he said, are more exploited as
withheld due to request)
30-year old nursing aid
at the National Kidney
and Transplant institute
(NKTI). He has been a COS
worker for three years. He
has one child who is an
incoming grade one pupil.

Choy said there
is no word yet from the
management about the
contractuals’ fate at the
end of this year. However
he is appealing to the
government to consider
those who dedicate their
service to the government
and their patients. He
said he too works for 12
hours, sometimes 15, and
attends to the patients’
needs. Hospitals, he said,
sometimes go beyond the
ideal ratio of nursing aid
to patient. “Sometimes we
attend to 30 patients,” he
told Bulatlat.
Benjie
Santos,
AHW
secretary general, said that
if the joint circular would
be implemented by the end
of the year, there would a
great impact on the delivery
of quality health services.

“It is not only
contractual workers who
will be affected by this joint
circular but the services
too,” he told Bulatlat in an
interview.

At the country’s
premier
government
hospital the Philippine
General Hospital (PGH),
where Santos works as a
nursing attendant, there are
they receive salaries as low The joint circular covers
as P8,000 ($154) a month.
all national government

They
are
also agencies,
Government-
calling for an end to Owned
or Controlled
contractualization
in Corporations
(GOCC),
the public health sector. state
universities
and
According to Mendoza, colleges and Constitutional
there are more than 13,000 bodies that have JO and
contractual health workers, COS workers.
including
administration
The Confederation
personnel, janitors, medical for Unity, Recognition
technologists
and
even and
Advancement
of
nurses.
Government Employees

According
to (COURAGE) called this
AHW,
contractualization as an institutionalization
in government hospitals of contractualization. It
is massive. There are 180 said there is no guarantee
housekeeping
workers that these workers will be
who are outsourced at regularized.
the Jose Reyes Memorial
In
the
health
Medical Center and 400- sector, 13,000 contractual
600
contractual
health employees
would
be
workers at hospitals that affected by the joint
are Government Owned and circular. Among
them
Controlled
Corporations is “Choy” (real name
(GOCC).
Massive lay-off in 2019
But health workers are facing
another battle as contractual
workers or those hired under
job orders (JO) and contracts
of service (COS) are facing a
looming lay-off at the end of
the year.

Joint Circular No. 1
series of 2017 released by the
Civil Service Commission
(CSC), Commission on Audit
(COA) and Department of
Budget and Management
(DBM) states that the hiring
of JO and COS workers in
the government sector will
be transferred to private
manpower agencies after
Dec. 31, 2018.

At present, JOs and
COS have been hired directly
Photo courtesy of Alliance of Health Workers
by government agencies.
292 JO workers and 386
COS workers.

He
said
there are more patients
now as President Duterte
has allotted a P100 million
per month subsidy for
medicines and laboratories
but did not add funds to
hire enough manpower to
provide quality health care
services.

“The
patients
are increasing but the
manpower is not. With
this kind of set up,
health workers, who are
mostly overworked, are
vulnerable to mistakes,” he
said. Therefore, he added,
there are more complaints
against the health workers
who could not perform
well on their duties and
responsibilities due to
understaffing.

“This would mean
the degradation of quality
of health services not only
in PGH but also in other
government hospitals,” he
said.

The AHW, together
with unions across the
country, vowed to fight the
joint circular.

“This
day,
we
call on our fellow health
workers, the patients who
we serve, and the Filipino
people, to work together
and fight for our right to
live and right to health.
This is our commitment,
this is our fight,” said
Mendoza.