MANILA, Philippines — Health workers' groups whose members have been waiting for benefits and allowances said they are even more angry at not receiving them after state auditors flagged "deficiencies" in the Department of Health's COVID-19 spending. The Commission on Audit in its yearly report said these deficiencies "contributed to the challenges encountered and missed opportunities by the DOH during the state of calamity/national emergency." That included a call for mass hiring of nurses as additional health workers in COVID referral hospitals and barangays. "Now that we learned about the P67.32 billion, we feel so angry about this because it only shows the misprioritization of our government and their outright neglect to the concerns or the plight of our health workers," she added. It added that deficiencies resulted from the non-submission of documents, which the DOH can still turn in.

Source: Philippine Star August 15, 2021 10:07 UTC