Bohol Officials Say: PCSO ambulance deal is above board

TAGBILARAN CITY, Philippines - "No strings attached"–was how the Boholano allies of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo described the ambulances granted to the province during the last four-and-a-half years of her administration.

Trinidad Mayor Roberto Cajes, who now belongs to the Liberal Party, explained that as representative of Bohol's 2nd district at the time, he managed to get one ambulance through the normal procedure.

Cajes said he applied for the ambulance at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) board of directors, which in turn approved it.

The 2nd district falls within the criteria for exemption from the 40-percent counterpart fund, having 4th class towns which have no single ambulance then, Cajes said adding that he had complete documents to prove that he followed the procedure in acquiring the ambulance for his district.

Broadsheets named Cajes among the 29 congressmen who got one ambulance each for their constituents without giving the 40-percent counterpart as provided for in the PCSO policy.

Representative Erico Aumentado (2nd district) was also named among the 65 pro-Arroyo governors who secured the most number of PCSO ambulances.

Aumentado brought in 12 PCSO ambulances during his past stint as governor of Bohol, but he said the deal was in accordance with the agreement between the PCSO and the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) and the League of the Provinces of the Philippines (LPP), for which ambulances will be given to provinces that give counterpart money equivalent to 40 percent of the cost.

Ten of the 12 ambulances went to hospitals operated by the provincial government; one went to the Bohol Medical Care Institute-a non-stock, non-profit institution, of which the provincial government is one of the major members; and one went to Don Emilio Del Valle Memorial Hospital in Ubay town.

Aumentado said he assigned one ambulance to Don Emilio Del Valle Memorial Hospital, though it's a national hospital, considering that it is a key hospital in the referral system of the provincial government and its ambulance was already defective by then.

Maybe Arroyo's participation, as the president of the country, was just to give the PCSO the authority to import the ambulances from China, said Aumentado. "It was only incidental that we were close allies of Arroyo when we acquired the 12 ambulances. We are just following the agreement between ULAP, LPP and the PCSO, which includes the provision that LGUs wanting to receive the ambulances from PCSO will have to allocate 40 percent of the cost," he said.— THE FREEMAN