New home for PCSO welfare patients opens at Lung Center

The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) has now found a new home for welfare beneficiaries and poor patients seeking medical assistance from the agency.

The PCSO will inaugurate on Thursday its new Fund Allocation Department (FAD) and clinic at the Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP) in Quezon City.

The FAD clinic used to be based at  Quezon Institute, also in Quezon City, but transferred to Quezon City Hall after the PCSO moved last October to the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.

The PCSO relocation followed a PCSO board resolution authorizing the agency to vacate the old Quezon City building in 2009, after studies showed that the old structure had become unsafe.

The Department of Public Works and Highways has also recommended its demolition.

PCSO Chairperson Margarita Juico said the transfer is part of the institution’s continuing effort to improve its services.

“Our clientele will now have a nice, comfortable clinic where it can wait, protected from the sun and the rains,” Juico said, referring to the PCSO’s steady stream of welfare beneficiaries.

Juico said the PCSO did not raise any money for the LCP site of FAD because it was the agency that provided part of the funds for the construction of the Lung Center during the Marcos regime.

The transfer of the new facilities is also part of PCSO’s 77th anniversary celebration on October 30 when Commonwealth Act No. 4130 was passed and signed in 1934 by Frank Murphy, then the American governor-general of the Philippines.

The law created the PCSO, replacing what was previously known as the  National Charity Sweepstakes.