The Department of Health said Friday it is investigating the nurses’ situation in Sorsogon after Governor Francis Escudero complained they had not received their salaries.
“We are trying to investigate,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a virtual briefing.
She said that they “do not take these things lightly.”
Vergeire said they had already called the regional health director and finance officers of the province to know more about the issue and to “address it immediately.”
In a tweet on Thursday night, Escudero, a former senator, said of the 11 nurses sent by the department to augment their hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, two “only got a salary for two months” when they worked for a total of five months.
The remaining nine “didn’t get any salary after working for over a month.”
Escudero said only one nurse was left working in their province.
“No one got any benefits in violation of their contract,” he said, ending the tweet with the hashtag #SalamatDOH.
In response, Vergeire said her department does not want anyone to be unfairly treated especially during the pandemic.
“We want everyone to be compensated appropriately and with benefits because we know that they are working and caring for our citizens,” she said.
This is not the first time that the department received flak for delayed salaries.
Besides the problems faced by government health workers, contractual employees hired for the agency’s surveillance unit also failed to receive their salaries for up to four months.
