Former senator Ernesto Maceda is right in his Philippine Star column of November 29. If the Aquino administration can give billions of pesos in cash doleouts to the poor, why can it not give meaningful and beneficial salaries to the health workers who serve them?
Philippine government health workers — doctors, nurses, midwives, and health aides — receive among the most ridiculously low salaries in the world. Their monthly salaries cannot even pay for one dinner at some fine restaurant that high government officials frequent.
So negligent and cavalier has government been toward workers in the public health sector that there was a time when nurses worked without pay as volunteers, with government accepting the practice until it became such a hot issue in media.
But when it comes to the poor who do not even pay taxes, government is very liberal in giving cash doleouts, for reasons that are purely political — the poor are not likely to bite the hand that feeds them.
So ridiculous has the situation become that the monthly cash doleouts given to the poor who do not pay taxes are even higher than the monthly allowances barangay health workers receive before taxes.
After taxes, government health workers are left with virtually no means to keep body and soul together. And yet this negligent, unconscionable and politically-motivated government keeps constant pressure on the public health sector to perform and deliver above-par.
How this government appreciates the value of its health workers speaks a million times louder than the motherhood statements it pays about straight and narrow leadership and ethical governance.
Neglecting health workers in favor of the poor from whom political favors can be curried during election time is a far worse form of corruption than stealing or taking money. Crippling the dignity of people steals the most basic sense of humanity from them.