Senate Majority Floor Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said the bill establishing a P600 million Bacolod City General Hospital (BCGH) was approved by the Senate on third reading Monday, May 31.
“Now it will await the president’s signature,” Zubiri told DIGICAST NEGROS.
The senator said he is optimistic President Rodrigo Duterte will sign it into law.
The hospital will cater to residents of Bacolod City, said Zubiri, author and co-sponsor of Senate Bill No. 1647, the counterpart measure to House Bill No. 6731 authored by Bacolod Rep. Greg Gasataya.
Right now, the whole province of Negros Occidental has only one tertiary government hospital and Bacolod alone has a population of over half a million people, Zubiri said.
“We saw how our hospitals have struggled throughout the pandemic. They’ve been performing at overcapacity, and our medical frontliners have been severely overworked,” he said.
“There is a clear need for more hospitals in the country, in order to reach out to and cater to more people, and also to alleviate the pressure on our existing hospitals”, he said.
In the 2015 national census, Bacolod City was recorded to have 561,875 residents, making it the most populated city in Western Visayas. Its residents are serviced by the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital, which caters to the whole of Negros Occidental, he pointed out.
“CLMMRH is already taking on double its bed capacity in order to service the whole of Negros Occidental. This is unreasonable,” Zubiri said.
He, Gasataya and Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia are working hard to make sure that the BCGH is established at the soonest possible time, Zubiri said.*