Ambulance shortage hits PCSO

The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes office has run out of ambulances.

This was the revelation yesterday of PCSO Chairwoman Honey Girl Singson-de Leon who said the agency’s inventory of the critical vehicle had practically been depleted during the tenure of Jinggoy Estrada as president of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP).

De Leon said when she assumed her post, all the ambulances which used to fill up the PCSO compound along E. Rodriguez Avenue in Quezon City had already been distributed to various local government units throughout the country.

A check with the LMP, however, showed that during the stint of Estrada, former San Juan mayor, as president of the league, only a total 126 ambulances were distributed to various municipalities.

Estrada requested for 120 more but these units were not delivered, an official of the LMP said. The distribution of ambulances was the subject of a Senate inquiry in the 11th Congress.

The bulk of these vehicles went to Lakas-NUCD mayors who got 76 units, followed by local officials with the then ruling LAMP party with 58 units. The rest were distributed to Reporma, Liberal Party, Nationalist People’s Coalition and Kampi.

A top LMP official who requested anonymity said that prior to the assumption of Estrada as league president, the PCSO had already distributed at least 3,000 ambulances to LGUs, non-government organizations and government-owned hospitals.

De Leon said because of the shortage of ambulances her office cannot act on requests for the vehicle which have been flooding her office for the past months.

"Requests for ambulances are already piling up," De Leon said in a telephone interview with Jullie Yap Daza’s Tell the People Now over the weekend.

She said the PCSO is planning to buy a new batch of ambulances to fill the needs of various groups, particularly local government units, which were not able to avail of the ambulance distribution program of the LMP under Estrada.

But De Leon said they were still scouting for four-wheel drive ambulances that can be used in hinterland barangays and municipalities.

Former PCSO chairman Manoling Morato, who was also present during the TV show, said most of the ambulances that were distributed to medical centers in the provinces usually end up as service vehicles for politicians in these localities.

Morato said politicians take over these vehicles when the receiving agencies in the LGU can no longer pay for maintenance and repair.

"Some of the local hospitals have no funds to maintain the ambulances so the local government takes over the vehicle," Morato said.–Perseus Echeminada