City Hall ‘to insure’ children

IN AN effort to promote Cebu City as a child-friendly city, Mayor Michael Rama wants all pre-school children enrolled in all the 80 barangay day-care centers, either school- or home-based, to be given life and accident insurance.

Rama recently issued the two-page Executive Order (EO) 12-15, or the Preschool Children Life Protection Program.

Under the order, Rama said it will be a City policy to protect the interest and well-being of children from all causes of child mortality, such as accidents, malignant neoplasm, pneumonia, diseases of the heart, other diseases of the nervous system, ill-defined and unknown causes of mortality, congenital anomalies, tuberculosis, diseases of the musco-skeletal system and connective tissues and dengue, among others.

Funding source

Rama invoked Article 2, Section13 of the Constitution, which recognizes the vital role the youth play in nation-building and which promotes and protects their physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual and social well-being.

Rama said funding for the program will come from the City’s Hospitalization and Medicines Program (Champ).

Every year, the City allocates P100 million for Champ.

“The insurance coverage will operate in lieu of the services from Champ since it shall be the insurer who shall shoulder the expense of the illness and hospitalization in case the risk insured from occurs while the insurance coverage subsists,” the mayor said.

Asked how much they will be spending for the insurance, City Administrator Atty. Jose Marie Poblete said the City will have to pay an annual premium of P45 per beneficiary.

Based on records of the City’s Department of Social Welfare Services, there are 8,434 day care students in some 157 daycare centers and 94 home-based day care centers in the city.

The mayor signed his new executive order last Sept. 18.