Execs: Pledges from private firms won’t affect CCMC’s service fees

File photo
File photo

OFFICIALS assured that the cost of treatment and other medical services being offered at the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) will not be affected even if the city hospital will be completed through a public-private partnership.

This comes after reports that four Filipino private firms and a group of Chinese businessmen have pledged to donate close to a billion pesos to the City in order to complete construction of CCMC’s eighth to 10th floors.

Sonia Empinado, CCMC hospital administrator, said that while the private firms will only help in completing CCMC’s construction, the City will still operate the hospital.

“Cebuanos, especially the poor, are assured that fees and charges of the hospital services (will not be affected) as mandated by city ordinance,” said Empinado.

Councilor Joselyn Pesquera, chairman of the committee of health, hospital services and sanitation in the City Council, also made the same assurance.

Jerone Castillo, special assistant to the mayor on special projects, said the pledge made by private companies is part of their respective corporate social responsibility.

He said the financial commitments secured by the City from various business groups will be handled “with utmost transparency and accountability.”

The local private companies that have pledged funds for the completion of CCMC’s last three upper floors are the SM Group, Ayala Group, Robinsons Group and Filinvest Group.

The first CCMC building was demolished after it sustained heavy damage during the 2013 earthquake.

The work for the new CCMC building started in 2015 and remained unfinished nearly eight years later.

The City also recently terminated its agreement to one of its contractors, M.E. Sicat Construction Inc., after Mayor Michael Rama could no longer bear the delay of the hospital’s construction.

Since the start of the construction, there were already three contractors who worked with the City to complete the hospital—C.E. Padilla Construction Inc. for Phase 1 and 2; C.B. Garay Philwide Builders for Phase 3; and M.E. Sicat Construction Inc. for Phase 4.

As of November 2022, the City had already spent almost P2 billion for the construction of the new CCMC building.

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