CAMARINES Sur Representative LRay Villafuerte said the House of Representatives should slash the Department of Health’s (DOH) budget in the proposed 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA) should its top officials “fall flat” in justifying to the Congress their alleged “criminal negligence” in supposedly failing to use all of last year’s state funds plus P3.4 billion in foreign aid intended for the country’s coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) response.

“What makes the DoH’s action—or lack of it—far more contemptible is that while health officials chose to sit on their hands rather than spend available money on programs to boost our healthcare capacity and save lives from the coronavirus, they had no qualms about buying pricey laptops worth about P700,000,” Villafuerte said.

“So unless Secretary Francisco Duque III and other health executives could defend fully and convincingly before the House of Representatives their criminal negligence in not using all of the P67.3 billion funds allocated to the DoH plus P3.4 billion in foreign aid for COVID-19 response last year, I don’t see why we should not prune the amount they are asking from the Congress in the proposed 2022 GAA.

“Why give the DoH more money next year supposedly for containing the pandemic when they had failed miserably last year to put taxpayers’ money and foreign aid to good use in the face of the ever increasing number of Filipinos getting sick and dying from the deadly virus?” the solon added.

Villafuerte said his proposed cut in the DOH’s budget for 2020 should be realigned and given to other agencies that need more funds to fight the coronavirus and assist families, businesses and other sectors hardest hit by the pandemic.

He said it certainly was an alleged act of criminal negligence on the part of Duque and the rest of health officials in “leaving our medical frontliners and our people to their fates by intentionally not using local and foreign funds at the DoH’s disposal to beef up our healthcare capacity and save lives.”

Villafuerte said the House should demand that DOH officials make a full disclosure and explain how they spent their COVID-19 response funds since 2020, following the release of a Commission on Audit (COA) report that flagged discrepancies in this agency’s use of its P67.23-billion budget last year intended for the country’s fight against the lingering pandemic.

As the House began this week its inquiry into the COA-flagged discrepancies in the DOH’s use of its COVID-19 response funds, Villafuerte said health officials’ alleged act of criminal neglect in the country’s battle against the prolonged pandemic was underlined not only by the non-use of available public funds but of P3 billion in foreign aid as well.

Aside from flagging the discrepancies in the use or non-use of P62.73 billion in state funds, the CoA was reported this week as identifying P3.4 billion in foreign aid that went idle in 2020 because the DoH vacillated in using such anti-COVID allotments to implement projects.

“The purpose of the urgency of securing funds from foreign sources will be put to naught if the DoH will dilly-dally the project implementation and not act efficiently,” the CoA auditors were quoted as saying in their 2020 audit report on the Department.

This P3.4-billion unutilized foreign aid along with the P11.89 billion-worth of unobligated programs from the P67- billion funds were flagged by the CoA for being deficiently managed by the DoH.

As for the pricey computers, the DoH claimed it had suspended its purchase of four “high end” laptops worth P700,000, with Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega saying this planned procurement was put on hold “pending the result of further market study and prevailing market price for these laptops.”

Villafuerte said the 2020 CoA report had buttressed his earlier beef with DoH officials for virtually deserting medical frontliners in failing to fully equip them with personal protective equipment (PPEs) that are essential in their daily battle to save patients—and themselves as well—from the deadly coronavirus.

He added that last April , the DOH executives failed to use in timely fashion the P3 billion allotted in Republic Act (RA) 11494 — the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act (Bayanihan 2) — for the acquisition of PPEs allegedly “smacks of criminal neglect,” as it put health workers at serious risk of infection, great harm and even death on a daily basis in the absence or shortage of such indispensable protection against the highly infectious pathogen.

Villafuerte was the lead author in the House of both the Bayanihan 1 and 2 laws.