ILOILO – Vaccinators here have yet to receive their One COVID-19 Allowance (OCA) or Health Emergency Allowance (HEA) covering January to April 2022. Why?
There are over 1,000 municipal COVID-19 vaccinators in this province. They are supposed to each receive P9,000 monthly allowance.
According to the Iloilo Provincial Health Office (IPHO), it’s the Department of Health (DOH), not the provincial government, that releases the OCA.
Funds are directly downloaded by the DOH central office to its regional office, said Dr. Maria Socorro Colmenares-Quiñon, IPHO head.
DOH Region 6 is responsible for making the payroll after vaccinators submit the requirements such as their daily time record (DTR) and a Land Bank of the Philippines account, she added.
The IPHO asked the DOH-6 about the status of the OCA, to which the latter’s Human Resource Department responded that the payrolls for January and February had been processed already.
“Hopefully basi bwas or Friday makagwa na ang January and February nga OCA,” said Quiñon, adding that the remaining allowances for the months of March and April are already being processed.
To recall, Gov. Arthur Defensor, Jr. initiated the hiring of COVID-19 vaccinators to augment the vaccination teams of municipalities in a bid to ramp up COVID-19 vaccination.
Vivian Salmon, supervising administrative officer of the IPHO, said they have complied with and submitted all the requirements stipulated in the OCA guidelines which came out on Feb. 10, 2022, through the DOH and Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Joint Circular No. 2022-0001.
Submission of documents is done online every end of the month through the OCA Information System.
Salmon, however, said they frequently encountered problems uploading documents due to system errors.
She stated that they had already sought the assistance of DOH-6 regional director, Dr. Adriano Suba-an, regarding their uploading difficulties, but the problem persisted.
She acknowledged that two complaints had already been lodged at the government’s complaint hotline, 8888, regarding the delayed release of OCA of Iloilo health workers, but they were not in control of it.
She added that they have already complied with everything that has been asked of them since March 2022, and the ball is already with the DOH. (With reports from ECG/ Capitol News)/PN
