MAASIN CITY, Jan. 4 (PIA) -- Contact tracers for Covid-19 who were hired by the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and were distributed to different local government units (LGUs) got another lease of their employment for this month, January, courtesy of the provincial government.
This developed at the provincial inter-agency meeting (PIATF) last week, when the fate of the 44 individual contact tracers all over the province was raised by City Mayor Nacional Mercado, who shared that their contracts were good only until December 31, 2020.
Aside from the contact tracers, nurses under the human resources for health (HRH) of the Department of Health (DOH) were also ending their contracts on the same date, and LGUs can ill afford to lose their services at this time when the fight against Covid was far from over, Mercado reported.
The intense discussion that ensued zeroed in on extending employment at least for another month, both for contract tracers and the more than 300 HRH nurses province-wide, to give time for the budgets of national agencies concerned, DILG and DOH, to cascade down the line.
It was initially moved that a 50-50 sharing agreement be considered, that is, the province pay for 50 percent, and another 50 percent be charged to the LGUs, municipalities and city, the salary take depending on the going rate of the LGUs for job order employees.
Macrohon Mayor Alan Aroy appealed that the province shoulders the cost for the 44 DILG contact tracers, and that the 50-50 counterpart, sharing scheme for the province and 19 LGUs be applied only for the HRH nurses.
Gov. Damian Mercado, who presided the PIATF meeting, readily approved the suggestion, and so for the beginning of the new year the frontliners in the continued battle against the pandemic will be motivated again to pick up the renewed challenge. (ldl/mmp/PIA8-Southern Leyte)
Source: Philippines Information Agency (pia.gov.ph)
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