NKTI director: No gross negligence in handling cases of infected workers

MANILA, Philippines — The director of National Kidney Transplant Institute (NKTI) in Quezon City has contradicted the claim of its workers that the administration had “gross negligence” in handling the increasing number of COVID-19 cases among its personnel.

“While it is true that the number of healthcare workers infected with the virus was increasing, the NKTI management denies such allegations of gross negligence,” Dr. Rose Marie Rosete-Liquete, executive director of NKTI, said in a statement on Tuesday.

This was after the NKTI Employees Association Alliance of Health Workers led a silent protest last Saturday to demand protection from coronavirus disease, regularization of contractual employees, mandatory swab tests, and release of Performance Based Bonus of 2018 – 2019, among others.

According to Liquete, the administration purchased its own testing equipment which helped in testing of its workers and patients.

“All patients for surgery/ admission even in the non-COVID ward were swabbed. We have done baseline mandatory swabbing already on more than 1,000 employees,” Liquete said.

During enhanced community quarantine, Liquete said they implemented a skeleton workforce to reduce the number of employees reporting for work while still maintaining full hospital operations.

The mandatory swab tests for employees were free of charge, Liquete also noted.

After an assessment, the NKTI official said the infection in health frontline employees was not sourced from the hospital.

“Per assessment of our industrial and infection control physicians, common virus transmission among health care workers were not totally attributable to the place of work as most transmission happens within the community or outside the Institute,” Liquete said.

Meanwhile, employees’ benefits are compliant with the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), Liquete said.

“The NKTI provided these benefits such as adjusted hazard pay and special risk allowance per directive of the national government and the same was granted only during the implementation of enhanced community quarantine,” Liquete said.

“Thus, such extension on granting the same is subject to further instructions by the latter (DBM) — the NKTI will only comply and execute,” she added.

On the regularization of workers, NKTI said some of their contractual workers could not be regularized as “they are not civil service eligible.”

CFC