Mayor Alfredo Abelardo “Albee” Benitez said he will try to the best of his ability not to pay for the 434,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines ordered by the previous city administration that Bacolod did not receive.
More than 300,000 of the 434,000 doses have expired at the Department of Health (DOH) cold storage facility in Metro Manila and the rest will expire at the end of the month, Benitez said at a press conference at the Bacolod City Government Center on Monday, July 11.
An AstraZeneca representative who met with him recently said that the city government owed them a balance of P98 million for the 650,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines ordered by the Leonardia administration, Benitez disclosed.
The Leonardia administration had paid AstraZeneca an initial P65 million, Benitez was also informed.
Based on the report of the City Health Office, only 216,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines arrived in Bacolod and were fully utilized, the mayor said.
However, the AstraZeneca representative told Benitez that remaining 434,000 doses ordered by the city government were already delivered to the DOH.
They said the 434,000 vaccines were delivered late last year but the city government would not accept them because it still had enough vaccines, Benitez said.
The problem is the vaccines only have a shelf life of six months so most of them have expired, he said.
“I have told the representative of AstraZeneca but ‘You will have to excuse me, I will try to the best of my ability not to pay you’,” Benitez said.
“We will see how it goes, but I would rather put that money somewhere else where it can be used by our people,” he said.
Benitez said he has asked the City Legal Office to check on the purchase agreement with AstraZeneca, to see if there is a loophole that will allow the city government not to pay for the P98 million.
Benitez said when he asked the AstraZeneca representative why they delivered the vaccines late last year when the city government was already administering booster shots, he was told that there was no provision in the agreement on when it should arrive.
It appears that the previous administration miscalculated and an over order of the vaccines was made, Benitez said.
Bacolod still has Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in its cold storage facility, he said.*