By Jel Santos A 56 percent decrease in Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office's (PCSO) charity assistance has been recorded, an agency official disclosed. PCSO GM Alexander Balutan
(Joseph Vidal / MANILA BULLETIN) PCSO General Manager Alexander Balutan said the charity assistance diminished from P416,663,375 in October 2017 to P181,956,434 for the month of October 2018. “While the Charity Assistance Department received 14,621 requests for the month of October this year, it only spent P181,956,434 as compared to the 12,048 nature of cases received in October 2017 where the agency spent P416,663,375. This time, we had to stick to the budget,” he said PCSO data showed that top on the list for the nature of cases when it comes to amount released is confinement with 4,276 cases at P64,850,200; followed by chemotherapy with 2,487 cases at P39,512,300; dialysis (hemodialysis and peritoneal) with 4,600 at P37,840,300; requests for medicines with 1,383 cases at P16,412,34; and laboratory and diagnostic procedures with 520 cases at P10,614,700. “But if you will look closely, dialysis (hemodialysis and peritoneal) really topped the list when it comes to nature of requests. It even jumped from 972 cases in October 2017 to 4,600 for October this year, but the agency only released P37,840,300 due to this budget constraint,” the general manager noted. Balutan asked the public to bear with them, saying they are exhausting all efforts to fix it. “Hopefully it’s only temporary. We are asking for everyone’s understanding and cooperation. Rest assured we are doing everything to address this,” he added. In September, the daily budget for the Individual Medical Assistance Program (IMAP) of the agency was reduced to P4.1 million from about P20 million daily. The reduction was due to the overutilization of medical assistance funds, which has reached over P4 billion as of July 2018.