MANILA – Unless there will be strong evidence that he is involved in corruption activities in Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), Ricardo Morales will stay on as the agency’s chief.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said that President Rodrigo Duterte has no plans to fire Morales despite the emergence of corruption activities in the agency during the Senate hearing last Tuesday.
“That’s really up to him. I am not in the position to tell him what to do. The President has said that he will not fire him unless there is evidence and I think the Senate now is in the process of documenting this evidence,” Roque told CNN Philippines’ The Source.
“At the same time, there is a parallel investigation being conducted by Undersecretary [Jesus Melchor] Quitain,” he added. “I think after the evidence are unearthed, the President will move and do the correct thing.”
Duterte appointed Morales as PhilHealth chief in June last year amid the issue on alleged funding of dialysis treatment for patients who were already deceased.
“I have no evidence that he is corrupt himself,” Roque said. “Our expectation is he will take concrete steps to rid the agency of corruption but I did not hear steps that he has taken to remove corruption in the agency. That to me is the most worrisome.”
Roque also said that he was convinced by the claims of former PhilHealth anti-fraud legal officer Thorsson Montes Keith that PhilHealth officials stole P15 billion public funds through fraudulent schemes.
“Perhaps he’s giving us an accurate estimate because he is not the only one who says that,” Roque said. “Someone who is familiar with the pattern of fraud perpetrated in PhilHealth, I would say that’s convincing because I had another source who said more or less that’s how much money that is being lost annually.”
“That’s not something that we can digest and we should never digest. We should never accept that even a single peso is lost through corruption,” he added./PN
