Senate panel adds P51B to proposed 2022 budget for frontliners’ benefits

Health workers from the Lung Center of the Philippines, the Philippine Heart Center, and the National Kidney and Transplant Institute in Quezon City on Monday, Oct. 11, 2021, hold a picket during their lunch break to seek more funds for hospitals and medical front-liners. (File photo from NIÑO JESUS ORBETA / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate finance committee has appropriated P51 billion for the COVID-19 benefits and compensation of healthcare frontliners, according to Sen. Sonny Angara, who sponsored the 2022 General Appropriations Bill on Tuesday as the committee.

“Such amount was not in the national expenditure program or NEP submitted to Congress a few months ago,” Angara said.

According to him, the proposed P51 billion will cover the special risk allowance of all public and private healthcare workers involved in the COVID-19 response.

The amount of the allowance, he noted, would depend on the “risk exposure of the worker”:

• P3,000 for those with “low risk” exposure
• P6,000 for those with “medium risk” exposure
• P9,000 for those with “high risk” exposure

“There is also significant funding to compensate any public or private health worker who contracted or died from COVID-19 in the line of duty: P15,000 for mild or moderate cases; P100,000 for severe or critical cases; and P1 million in cases resulting in death,” he added.

In an online interview earlier in the day, Angara said that among the committee’s sources for the funding of the medical workers’ COVID-19 benefits and compensation is the budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac).

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