LAST week, the regional office of the Department of Health, already manifested in no unmistakable tone its serious concern and apprehension over the continued delay or indications of rejection of the Mother and Child Hospital in the city by the seven Dagupan City opposition councilors who comprise majority bloc in the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP).

DOH Regional Director Paula Sydiongco wrote the members of the SP a letter reiterating DOH’s appeal anew to finally pass the resolution authorizing Mayor Belem Fernandez to sign the memorandum with DOH for the establishment of the hospital after the series of committee hearings and joint meetings on the issue. But the seven councilors thought nothing of shocking the Dagupan citizenry with Councilor Maria Lourdes Fernandez’s declaration, as chairperson of the committee on health, submitting a “not favorable” recommendation for the passage of the resolution. She and her cabal of obstructionists certainly made no bones about making it known that they will block the project unless their earlier demand for more compensation via monthly allowances of 10 “job order workers” is met.

The seven anti-Dagupeños’ welfare were even unrelenting in raising irrelevant, nonsensical issues to justify the continued rejection of the resolution. Again, this even after the DOH fully complied and submitted all the data requested which were non-issues for the establishment of the hospital since the project was at no costs to the city government.

The casual, dimwitted reply of Ms. Fernandez, a doctor herself, invoking her committee’s right “to study” the intent of the letter before it gives its final response, was harebrained at the very least. It was not only the worst insult she threw at every thinking Dagupeño but the worst insensitive response to the residents’ cry for more health and welfare services being offered by DOH. To study a letter appeal? Not even a HS student council would think of it.

Regrettably, this is one serious consequence of the refusal of the Dagupan City government to make the seven councilors legally accountable for their official actions, sabotaging local governance, from refusing to pass and or delay the passage to 2022 and 2023 annual budgets, to blatant violations of the Local Government Code.

If Mayor Fernandez believes that Dagupeños truly deserve to have the hospital, then she must finally act drastically and put an end to incessant obstruction being raised by Councilors Librada Fe Reyna-Macalanda, Alvin Coquia, Celia Chua-Lim, Maria Lourdes Fernandez, Alipio Serafin Fernandez, Redford Erfe-Mejia and Victoria Czarinna Lim-Acosta, bordering on blackmail on every turn.

The seven must be charged before the Ombudsman for deliberately acting vs. peoples’ welfare.

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