Let LGUs lead

“It’s one of the best laboratories I’ve seen,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said after he finally inspected the Marikina COVID-19 testing center. The health secretary also said the facility will receive its accreditation by Tuesday (April 21). Proficiency testing of the testing center staff will be completed today, April 20. Then Duque said, ironically, “Hopefully this will become a model to other local government units so that our testing capacity can intensify or expand.”

And so the Department of Health (DOH) blinked. Yet for nearly the past two months, the DOH has pictured the Marikina City initiative as naïve and unaware of the dangers of entering a highly esoteric field with defined standards and protocols that are extremely difficult to meet outside the usual hospital setting. Earlier in the week, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, in her calm, measured voice, was still admonishing the city government of Marikina to be patient and to complete the accreditation process, which she said was still just 80- to 90-percent complete. She continued warning against the “harm” that might befall Marikina constituents if the process was not completed. This DOH warning was a standard part of a series of rebuffs of the Marikina initiative over March and April that made people wonder what was happening.

Marikina City initially set up its COVID-19 testing facility on the 6th floor of its City Health Office. The DOH inspectors reportedly said the testing center met DOH standards, except for its location. Well, those kinds of pushbacks would be fatal for ordinary local governments, but not for an LGU excellence-hall-of-famer like Marikina. Mayor Marcelino Teodoro found a suitable two-story building in Bayan-Bayanan Avenue and transferred the testing center there. Marikina was ready for inspection on Monday, April 13. It didn’t happen. Vergeire said Marikina called for inspection only at

4 p.m. on Monday. Teodoro said they waited for the inspectors the whole day Monday and called at 4 p.m. because the inspectors had not arrived. And so the accreditation tit-for-tat continued between Teodoro

and Vergeire, the mayor playing the local autonomy and general welfare card while the undersecretary played the health

expert card.

Last week, visibly fed up, Teodoro decided to open the testing center on Friday, April 17, with or without accreditation from the DOH. He said he was ready to face the consequences of violating the law requiring licenses for testing laboratories. He said he could no longer put off mass testing for Marikina residents, many of whom were dying without being tested.

Apparently, this prompted Duque to head off a Marikina City confrontation with the DOH. With its poor COVID-19 organizational response, the DOH could not win. Besides, two days before, a call by citizens for Duque to step down eventually merited support from the Senate, which passed a resolution on April 16 calling for Duque’s resignation over the failed coronavirus

response. It was signed by 14 senators. The snail-paced accreditation process for the Marikina testing facility had been one of the key issues of delays and ineptitude leveled against the DOH.

The prospects are that Marikina City will build on this big win to show the Marikina COVID-19 testing center to be effective, efficient, and responsive to the needs of the people. Excellence in governance is in the DNA of Marikina City, while scandalous ineptitude has dogged the DOH since

the Dengvaxia controversy a couple of years ago.

All’s well that ends well? Not quite. The Marikina case involving Teodoro and the Pasig case involving Mayor Vico Sotto (tricycles used to ferry health workers allegedly in violation of the ban on public transport) will be part of the disturbing continuing saga in the fight against COVID-19 between local governments and national government agencies. This feud has been festering for the past 30 years. For far too long, the national government has pushed back against the spirit and letter of the 1987 Constitution regarding local autonomy and decentralization.

Now the question facing the nation is its exit strategy from the enhanced community quarantine. Should it be extended? Should it be lifted gradually, selectively? Should it be lifted totally? It will be a mistake for the national government to go it alone, consulting all key national government agencies but not the local governments on the ground. Local governments must be consulted. The national government should have realized by now that local government support and engagement are key to a successful long-term COVID-19 government response.

[email protected]