Friday, July 27, 2007 ‘No way VSMMC can earn P48M from its dorm’
AUDITORS got it wrong when they said Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) lost at least P48 million in potential earnings from the operation of its dormitory.
There is no way the facility can earn that much, said Reynaldo Nuñez, president of the Southern Island Hospital Nursing School Alumni Association Inc., (SIHNSAAI).
“They say I stole P48 million from the operation of the dormitory. Does the dormitory earn that much? Was I operating a mall?” Nuñez said in an interview yesterday.
The association managed the dormitory based on a 2002 agreement with the hospital.
Nuñez, the report alleged, under-declared earnings of the facility.
Wearing his white nurse’s uniform, Nuñez yesterday said auditors inspected their books but ignored his explanations.
He said there is no way he defrauded the hospital of P48 million, representing the dormi-tory’s income for 2006, because the dormitory’s income didn’t reach that much.
He said, there is no way that the dormitory – which can only accommodate 220 people – can earn that much in a year at the current rate of P1,000 per student. The rate was set by their 2002 memorandum of agreement.
Nuñez said he is puzzled where COA got its figures. He said that while one school indeed charged their students over P5,000 for the dormitory stay, only P1,000 per student was paid to the dormitory. The rest went to food, laundry, uniform and other expenses.
And while it is true that payments to the canteen, laundry service and other contracted firms were coursed through the dormitory, that money didn’t belong to them.
“We (SIHNSAAI) operated the dormitory starting 2002 after we saw that it was just being neglected,” he said.
The hospital didn’t appear to have the resources needed to operate, much less renovate, the facility at that time, he said.
A memorandum of agreement was signed and control was transferred to the association with the agreement that whatever income is generated will be shared, with 60 percent going to the hospital.
The dormitory serves out-of-town nursing students here in Cebu for either review or an educational tour.
The first three years of operation were marked by losses, Nuñez said. An audit report prepared by private accounting firm VT Villamar and Associates listed the losses as P60, 158.75 for the remainder of 2002, P96,394.35 for 2003, and P77, 114.25 for 2004.
The facility only began to earn in 2005, generating a net income of P381,226.90 on a gross income of P585,000 less P203,773.10 in expenses. Of the net income, P228,736.14 was remitted to the hospital as its 60 percent share.
Nuñez admitted that the association no longer had the authority to run the dormitory in 2006 because their management contract expired the year before.
But, he said, they never received any notice telling them to stop managing the facility. Moreover, he said VSMMC Chief Gerardo Aquino accepted the hospital’s 60 percent share with no reservations or instructions.
Officials at the VSMMC yesterday refused to comment on the allegations on the dormitory management.
Eleodoro Mongaya Jr., VSMMC public information officer, told Sun.Star Cebu that they will just wait for Aquino to issue a statement.
Aquino was still in Manila yesterday and is expected to come back on Monday yet.
But Mongaya said the hospital is already preparing its reply to the COA “confidential” report, although “bulky attachments” have delayed it.
As an answer to the COA report, Aquino formed a committee to investigate the allegations against the hospital.
VSMMC is currently embroiled in controversies over management of its operations.
A COA report indicated that the hospital lost an estimated P100 million through various graft and corrupt practices that include referring clients to private diagnostic clinics for services that the VSMMC laboratory could have provided and purchases that didn’t pass through bidding.
The report, signed by COA regional cluster director Jose Desamparado, was submitted to Health Secretary Francisco Duque.
A substantial part of the report was dedicated to an added P48 million that reportedly got lost because of irregularities in the way the dormitory, one of the hospital’s assets but run by the SIHNSAAI pursuant to a 2002 management contract, was being operated.
According to the report, the previous VSMMC administration didn’t enforce the terms and conditions of the agreement and never audited its financial statements. When the management contract expired in 2005, the hospital didn’t assume control quickly, the report said. (KNR with a report from JGA)
