PCSO branch opening in Baguio a relief to Cordillera patients

By Ramon Dacawi  

BAGUO CITY -- The recently opened Baguio-Benguet branch of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office near the city post office will stabilize operations soon, to the relief of thousands of indigent patients who no longer have to travel to Metro-Manila or to Urdaneta, Pangasinan for support from the charity service arm of the national government 

Dr. Ernieli Dancel, Urdaneta branch manager who was designated to open and head the branch here, said the local office is into hiring personnel to normalize its operations.The recruitment, especially that of a social worker to evaluate medical support applications, was delayed due to the ban on hiring due to the recent elections. 

She said pending hiring of augmentation personnel, the present staff of six continue to process applications for medical fund support averaging 15 to 20 a day. 

Dancel revealed that the PCSO board is also expected to adopt a policy upping the ceiling of medical support grants that can be approved by branch offices from P10,000 to P50,000 to give substance to the on-going decentralization scheme. 

The PCSO recently transferred processing of fund support applications from its office at the Lung Center in Quezon City to its branch and regional offices to bring closer its services to the needy. 

According to a resolution passed by the city council last April, however, the decentralization scheme would be rendered ineffective unless a branch or two are also opened in the Cordillera and in Mindanao where, as per the website of the PCSO, no district or regional office is found. 

The resolution, authored by city councilor Peter Fianza, asked the immediate  setting up of district and regional offices in the two regions, both of which belong the the country’s poorest. 

With this omission, the resolution said, patients from Baguio and the Cordillera had to line up at the Urdaneta branch or in Region II, in the process competing for attention and support with the constituents of the two regions. 

Fianza said “juxtaposed to this inequity is the reality that patients from outside Baguio and the Cordillera, such as those comjign from Regions I, II and III, are drawn to Baguio City for their medical and holspital needs as the city is indisputable the medical center of Northern Luzon”.

The city council resolution noted that regular hemodialysis patients of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center  who were lining up at the Urdaneta branch were told that only three patient applications from the BGHMC  would be approved per week.

This, despite the fact that the BGHMC has the biggest number of dialysis patients, 179 as of last March. 

The resolution came after a letter-appeal from mayor Mauricio Domogan asking increase in allocation for BGHMC patients from Urdaneta branch and the opening of a PCSO branch here. 

Referring to the city council resolution, PCSO director Mabel Mamba wrote city-vice mayor Daniel Farinas, saying “in the province of Benguet, the branch office will transfer to the Post Office Loop, Upper Session Road, Baguio City”. 

Mamber added that “for Kalinga and Apayao, patients are attended to at our Isabela and Cagayan branches while the branch offices in these provinces have not been established yet”.

For patients seeking fund support, the branch office here is actually along Fr. Carlu, corner of Post Office Loop.