House saves PCMC from eviction

MANILA, Philippines - The House of Representatives is saving the Philippine Children’s Medical Center (PCMC) in Quezon City from eviction by providing funds to buy the land on which it stands, a lawmaker said yesterday.

The House, upon the recommendation of its appropriations committee, allocated P1.227 billion in the hospital’s 2015 budget specifically for the acquisition of the 3.7-hectare lot the children’s hospital occupies.

Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, appropriations committee chairman, said the P1.227 billion is on top of the P389 million in national government subsidy for the hospital for next year.

This brings the total budget for PCMC to P1.616 billion, he said.

He said the House decided to provide the necessary funds for the purchase of the PCMC lot because the National Housing Authority (NHA), which owns the property, has been threatening to evict the hospital.

“We can assure the hospital’s patients, their parents, staff, and other stakeholders that PCMC will stay put where it is, because we in the House give priority to our children’s and our people’s health,” he said.

The NHA wants to recover the PCMC lot, located at the corner of Agham Road and Quezon Avenue, apparently to expand its commercial development joint venture with private developers.

Just across the children’s hospital and the Office of the Ombudsman’s office, the NHA has entered into a long-term lease with Ayala Land for the development of its huge property bounded by EDSA, North Avenue, Agham Road and Quezon Avenue.

It is on this property where Trinoma Mall is located and where Ayala Land is building its Vertis North residential condominium complex.

Across Trinoma Mall, along EDSA, is SM City North, while at the corner of EDSA and Quezon Avenue is Eton Properties’ Centris. 

PCMC is one of four government-owned specialty hospitals in Quezon City. The three others are the Philippine Heart Center, National Kidney and Transplant Institute and Lung Center of the Philippines.

The four used to receive hundreds of millions of medical assistance funds from senators and congressmen until the Supreme Court declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund, the congressional pork barrel, as unconstitutional in November last year.

In a hearing last Oct. 29, the Senate tried to resolve the issue of the children’s hospital’s eviction.

Senators proposed two possible solutions: the issuance by President Aquino of a proclamation giving the land to the hospital and swapping a Department of Health (DOH) property in Sambag, Cebu with the PCMC lot.

They discovered that the DOH and NHA had entered into a memorandum of agreement in 1992 on the land swap, but that the present leadership of the two agencies would now need an opinion from the Department of Justice whether this 22-year-old agreement still holds.

NHA general manager Chito Cruz told senators that his agency would accept either of the two proposed solutions.

He said they could use the Cebu property as a relocation site for families displaced by Super Typhoon Yolanda. His agency is in charge of building permanent housing for Yolanda evacuees.