Abante: Time for Duque to resign
DEPUTY Speaker Bienvenido “Benny” Abante Jr. has said that now is time for Health Sec. Francisco Duque III to make good on his word and hand over his resignation to President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte.
Duque earlier announced that he will resign after he addressed the audit findings of the Department of Health (DoH).
“Sec. Duque should stop making excuses and just step down. In any case, those audit problems were encountered under his watch, and there is a better chance of uncovering what went wrong if someone competent handles the issue,” Abante said.
“We have been setting records in the number of new cases daily, our hospitals are overwhelmed, and close to 35,000 Fiipinos have lost their lives,” said Abante, who lamented that the government failed to accurately report COVID infection figures on September 8 after the DoH admitted that there were technical issues with COVID, the Department of Information and Technology’s (DICT) COVID-19 information system.
“Our health department is supposed to lead the charge in this war against COVID, but its leadership appears to have no strategy to win. Ang sagot lagi sa pagtaas ng kaso ay lockdown. Kung hindi lockdown, face shield; wala namang maayos na contact tracing, wala namang comprehensive testing,” added Abante.
The legislator revealed that “these are the frustrations of our constituents, who keep asking us in Congress, when will this all end? Why are other countries able to make progress in their efforts to cope with the pandemic, while our lockdowns cannot even be planned properly and are not announced on time?”
Abante was referring to the government’s last-minute decision to extend the MECQ to September 15 after it had earlier announced the shift to GCQ beginning this week.
The sudden backtracking, said the solon, hurt a lot of workers in his district, who had hoped to resume their means of livelihood.
The House leader reiterated that Duque should immediately step down “to give way to a Health secretary who can help restore confidence in government pandemic response efforts.”
“Sec. Duque has too much baggage. All these allegations about the mishandling of DoH funds, the missteps in handling our health frontliners’ benefits, and the surge in the number of COVID cases have battered his credibility. He needs to go, and he needs to go now,” Abante said.
