Council wants Ombud to look into medicine program

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu City Council has requested the Office of the Ombudsman to conduct an investigation into the lapses in the implementation of the city’s Long Life Medical Assistance Program (LLMAP).

During the December 12 regular session, Councilor Jocelyn Pesquera delivered a privilege speech and said she received information that there are medicines “unlawfully discarded and thrown away” that are supposedly for the beneficiaries of the program.

In her speech, she said that the investigation is aimed to determine the administrative or criminal liability of the office or individuals responsible for the mishandling of the medicines intended for the Long Life Medical Assistance Program of the City of Cebu.

Pesquera said there are medicines with different names written on small packs of plastic lying on the grassy area of one of the sitios of Barangay Bonbon, a mountain area in the city.

She said these medicines appeared to be the free medicines supposedly delivered by at least 800 workers of the LLMAP to some 40,00 beneficiaries.

“Were these medicines deliberately thrown away? If not, was there an appropriate report made of its loss by the person assigned to deliver said medicines?” she said.

Pesquera said she is wondering if the LLMAP has a monitoring system in place to ensure that the free medicines are being delivered daily to the recipients.

LLMAP is a pet project of the current administration wherein the city’s out-of-school youths will deliver free medicines to residents of the city every day. The program has over 40,000 beneficiaries who are suffering from hypertension, diabetes, arthritis.

In July this year, she said the City Council approved P19 million for the LLMAP. Of the amount, P14 million was allocated to purchase medicines while the P5 million goes to the salary of the workers who will deliver the medicines.

With the budget in place, Pesquera said there should be a clear set of guidelines in the selection of the recipients, workers, among others, in the program.

She said there is a need to seek the services of trained and qualified healthcare professionals when the safety and lives of the recipients are at stake.  Sought for comment, Mayor Tomas Osmeña admitted that there are workers who are “abusing” their jobs.

He said he will allow the Office of the Ombudsman to also investigate the throwing of medicines.

The mayor said the project, which is running for over a year now, needs fine-tuning.

“We will be going to release the list of the long life beneficiaries to see if there are ghosts in there and to see if they get their medicines. It has to be transparent,” he said.

This time, the mayor said he will work on the appropriation of P5 per head for the use of the hiring of workers from the Team Rama-allied barangay captains since they have the motivation to evaluate the program of the administration.

Osmeña said he will allow the Team Rama captains to hire people to do the audit of the project, saying the project has to be transparent. (FREEMAN)