The PGH Imbroglio: Battle for Directorship, Control of UP Board Traced to Questionable Deal

Last Feb. 25, Dr. Gonzales’s directorship was suddenly terminated when the BOR, led by Roman and the Malacañang appointees, made two unprecedented decisions in UP. One, they revoked the appointment of Dr. Gonzales, the first time a UP official was removed even if there are no questions regarding his or her qualifications. Two, they removed the student regent from the BOR for not being enrolled. The issue regarding the status of the student regent was already discussed and deliberated upon during the December 18 BOR meeting before the regents voted on the PGH directorship. The BOR then resolved that the student regent could vote.

As the two new directors slug it out in the PGH, the battle within the BOR further heats up as progressive student organizations protest the removal of their elected student regent “on the basis of technicality and harassments.” The All-UP Workers Alliance said in a statement that Roman used a “fake majority” to replace the new duly elected PGH director and kick out a student regent .

In his March 5 Philippine Daily Inquirer column Raul Pangalanan, former dean of the UP College of Law, questioned the status of the three Malacañang appointees, including Sarmiento who raised questions on the capacity of the student regent to vote. Pangalanan wrote that the three Malacañang appointees who voted to terminate Gonzales’s appointment have expired terms as they were appointed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as “Acting Member, Board of Regents” for more than a year already. Pangalanan cited Administrative Code, Executive Order 292, which provides that “in no case shall a temporary designation exceed one year.” All three had been in the BOR for more than a year, including Sarmiento who was appointed on Sept. 29, 2008. “They were all essentially impostors on Dec. 18, trying to oust the student regent who enjoyed an authentic mandate,” Pangalanan wrote.

The UP-PGH in Manila: A hospital of last resort for indigent patients(Photo by Marya Salamat / bulatlat.com)

Why?

In the first place, why is the “Roman empire,” as Roman’s leadership is now being called by protesters in UP, dead set on putting a PGH director of its own choice? Why go through all the involved hassles of reversing the BOR’s vote for a qualified, already serving and all-too-willing PGH director like Dr. Gonzales?

One of the biggest reasons, according to the UP All Workers Alliance, appears to lie in the multi-million peso lease contract signed by UP through Roman and Daniel Mercado Medical Center (DMMC) through its president and CEO Edwin M. Mercado. The “historic signing” of the “dream come true,” as then UP-PGH director Dr. Carmelo Alfiler described it in their website, happened on June 18, 2009, after almost four years of bidding and negotiations.

During this long period of bidding and negotiations, a lot of terms were changed in the previously widely embraced Faculty and Medical Arts Building (FMAB), said Ebesate. “Many in UP-PGH had been okay with the first envisioned FMAB,” he said, when it was largely just meant to house clinics and research offices for lease to UP doctors and faculty members.

But as negotiations with DMMC went on, the FMAB later included having concessions for pharmacy, laboratory, radiology and other diagnostic exams. These would directly compete against the PGH’s services, noted the All-UP Workers’ Union. The proposed lease also lengthened from 15 to 25 years, excluding one and a half years for conversion, rehabilitation and development of the site. The covered area was also broadened from 3,400 square meters to 3,900.

When Roman finally signed the lease contract last year, the UP-PGH’s leased premises, referring to the three-storey concrete building known as the PGH Dispensary Building situated within the PGH Complex in the UP Manila campus, covers a “leasable floor area of 4,941.93 square meters, more or less, from the ground floor to the third floor roof deck of the building.”

UP leased to DMMC this portion of the Dispensary Bldg for practically P202.1 ($4) per square meter, said Ebesate, when the Philippine National Bank in an almost similar location pays rent of P456 ($9.90) per square meter since the 1990s.

Given the changes on the FMAB contract provisions, the All-UP Workers’ Alliance tried to block the signing of the contract for a better deal that would not be disadvantageous to the PGH.

“We protested (against the lease contract) due to (its) possible implications on hospital operations,” said Ebesate. He explained that the PGH pharmacy, which gives PGH some P24 million to P30 million per year to the charity fund for indigents, as well as pays for the salaries of more than 200 employees, risk losing revenues to the looming pharmacy operation of DMMC.

It doesn’t look wise to risk losing up to P30 million on the PGH’s pharmacy operations alone in exchange for the expected P12 million annual rent for the first five years, Ebesate said. And we’re talking here of the pharmacy alone. The lease contract signed by Roman also allows DMMC to operate or lease to concessionaires laboratory, radiology and other diagnostic exam, which are already being offered in PGH.