Health workers from the Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP) staged a protest on Monday, March 21, to call for a salary increase the release of "long overdue" unpaid benefits.
Eleazar Sobinsky, President of LCP Employees Association-Alliance of Health Workers said health workers from the hospital have yet to receive their active hazard duty pay (AHDP) from March to June 2021.
“Our hospital is one of the assigned COVID-19 referral hospitals but we, health workers who admit droves of COVID-19 patients amidst our vulnerability to become patients also, are deprived of this small compensation. Our lives and the lives of our family are at stake in the fight to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic,” Sobinsky lamented.
He added that health workers hired under the Department of Health (DOH) Augmentation and Health for Human Resources program to augment the understaffed permanent health personnel have also not received their benefits mandated under the Bayanihan Act II.
“At this time of steeply rising prices of oil and basic commodities, these benefits will augment our meager salary. Thus it is just fair for us to demand an increase in our salary,” Sobinsky added.
According to the Union, salary regularization adjustments were also not given to health workers assigned as frontliners in COVID-19 areas.
Clothing allowance and additional Collective Negotiation Agreement Incentives worth P15,000 were not released as well.
Meanwhile, LCP has yet to release a statement.