Why Dagupan lost the P150M for Mother-Child Hospital
LOCAL councils are prohibited from discussing any other matter until the annual budget for the succeeding year is passed, based on Section 323 of the Local Government Code — and this contributed to the delay in the passage of just a simple resolution authorizing Mayor Belen Fernandez to sign a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Health for the construction of the P150 million Maternal and Child Care Hospital (MCH) in Dagupan City.
Recall that the annual budget in 2023 was passed only in late September that year and its passage was even questioned by the seven majority councilors, leading to a rowdy session on October 3. This resulted in the filing of administrative and criminal charges against three of the majority councilors, and the majority bloc also filed a case before the Regional Trial Court questioning the passage of the annual budget, which was eventually dismissed.
Since the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) cannot discuss any other matter unless the 2023 annual budget was passed, Fernandez sent a Letter of Urgency only on October 23, 2023 to the SP requesting the passage of a resolution authorizing her to enter into an agreement with DOH. This was ignored.
At that point, it was only a month before the November 15, 2023 deadline set by the DOH for the submission of the said resolution, and failure to meet the deadline meant the fund would be reverted back to DOH.
On October 31 that year, proposed resolution no. 6357-2023 was filed and calendared for first reading. But there was no quorum in that session, with only five councilors from the minority bloc present along with DOH officials attending as resource speakers.
On November 21, a committee report was submitted to the SP, manifesting that the majority withheld its recommendation for the construction of the MCH until some conditions were met and documents submitted.
No discussion on the matter was done from January 1 to the third week of March 2024 as the annual budget for that year was still pending.
On March 22, 2024, the SP received a letter dated March 19 from Dr. Paula Paz Sydiongco of the DOH regional office requesting that they be invited to attend the SP session on March 26 to talk about how they can urgently facilitate the construction of the MCH.
It took another seven months of resistance, mainly over the MCH location, before the resolution for the Dagupan-DOH MOA was finally passed on October 8.
Demolition work was already undertaken on the old LTO site where the hospital was to be built, and an inauguration ceremony was held, but actual construction could not be immediately started given established bidding procedures and other requirements for government projects.
While the city administration and the DOH were rushing to get the project going, the fund that was allocated in 2022 had been reverted back to the national treasury as government regulations provide that appropriations for Capital Outlays — such as the MCH fund — must be used within two years. (Leonardo Micua)
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