Not one of the nurses presently employed under the DOH Nurse Deployment Program will lose their jobs next year on account of the projected budget cuts.

RN pa rin sila, Retained Nurses.

This is the assurance made on record and in the open by Senator Go, the sponsor of the DOH budget, as well as the DOH and DBM officials in attendance.

And the status quo covers all other health professionals – doctors, midwives, medical technologists – in the DOH Human Resource for Health Deployment Program (HRHDP).

With funding secured, no one will be excised from the program.

United ang Senado sa isyung ito. I thank Senator Sonny Angara for including in the Senate committee report on the 2020 national budget my amendment to infuse P7 billion to the program so there will be “zero casualty”.

At hindi lang ako ang may ganoong paninindigan at panukala. On both sides of the aisle, our commandment to the DOH is “Thou shall not fire.”

The result is that the 17,293 nurses deployed this year will stay on. The ‘endo’ of 7,107 nurses has been averted.

Also, the contracts of 597 medical technologists and 202 dentists will be renewed. Under the original DOH budget, not one of them will be rehired next year.

In all, about 10,921 health personnel under the DOH-HRHDP will keep their jobs. It would have been a plague-like 40 percent casualty rate had the Senate not intervened.

Ito nga pala ang resibo ng floor debates:

Recto: My understanding is that thousands would have lost their jobs, but then we recommended an amendment to the DOH budget of P7B. Is that correct?
Go: Correct

Recto: So we have that assurance walang mawawalan ng trabaho?
Go: Correct

Recto: How many will lose their jobs?
Go: Wala po.