Capitol offers JO slots for doctors

CEBU, Philippines — After months of yielding zero applicants, the Cebu provincial government has decided to hire medical doctors for its four provincial and 12 district hospitals on a job order basis instead of outsourcing them.

That means the Capitol will now stop manning agency LBP Service Corp. from looking for candidates for the posts and will itself institute the hiring process.

LBP Service is a Manila-based agency that won a P258-million contract with Capitol back in September to supply over 800 medical and clerical personnel to the provincial and district hospitals and the offices at the Capitol.

The outsourcing contract was a deviation from the previous administration’s policy of directly hiring the workers and placing their payroll under the Capitol, a move Governor Gwendolyn Garcia described as costly.

After the contract was sealed, LBP Service posted announcements for the job vacancies for medical doctors and specialists in the provincial and district hospitals, but none reportedly applied.

Without the positions filled up, the Capitol cannot proceed with its plan to have its provincial hospitals accredited as Level 2.

Dr. Sheila Faciol, head of the Public Health Operations Division of the Provincial Health Office (PHO), was quoted as saying in a report that this is why they have come up with another way to meet the requirement, and that is to hire doctors as job order workers.

At the moment, Cebu operates four provincial hospitals in the town of Balamban and the cities of Bogo, Carcar, and Danao, all of which are considered Level 1 hospitals that can only perform minor surgical operations.

Garcia had envisioned these hospitals to be upgraded and equipped with intensive care units, which spells that advanced medical technologies can now be more accessible by the people.

While no new doctors or specialists have been outsourced so far, a few chose to remain when the provincial government implemented the outsourcing, meaning they stuck it out with the hospitals even as they were now branded as “outsourced” personnel.

Garcia said that those doctors who have remained since the transition from direct employment to the outsourcing scheme will be considered for the job order employment as their act showed “commitment” to their profession and “loyalty.”

As for their salaries, Garcia said she will try to balance it according to what the regular employees versus how much the outsourced personnel are receiving. She said it might be unfair to regular employees since they are subject to withholding tax.

“The best thing we could offer is put them under contract of service nga ilang ma-take home would still be lower than the regular but then it would be enough for them to compensate considering industry rates karon,” she said.

Garcia also defended the outsourcing scheme, saying it is as an efficient means of quality control for services provided by provincial personnel. However, with the direct hiring of doctors, she assured that a close monitoring of their performance will also be conducted.

“We are also closely watching the performance of these doctors kay magpakita sila, and then definitely we can consider mo-graduate ni sila into becoming regular employees,” Garcia said. (FREEMAN)