NOTE: THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE BOHOL CHRONICLE’S SUNDAY PRINT EDITION.

Hospital frontliners will be getting P3,000 monthly hazard pay and P5,000 monthly allowance for the months of September to December.

Gov. Art Yap signed the Memorandum of Agreement with the Department of Health last Friday for this purpose.

In the MOA, the DOH will provide actual hazard duty pay (AHDP) of not be less than P3,000 pesos per month and Covid-19 special risk allowance of not less than P5,000 per month to every hospital frontliner.

Covered period is from September 15 to December 19 this year.

Meanwhile, Gov. Yap announced that the provincial government will be adding P150 to the monthly allowance of the barangay health workers (BHWs) starting next year which will be further increased in 2022.

The governor made the announcement when he distributed the honorarium of for the 3rd quarter of 2020 to each of the BHWs in Pilar, Sierra-Bullones, Bien Unido, Danao, Ubay, President Carlos P. Garcia, Talibon, Buenavista, Inabanga, Dagohoy, Trinidad, Getafe, San Miguel, Sagbayan, Clarin, Batuan, Carmen, Anda, Duero, Alicia, Candihay, Mabini, and Guindulman,

The increase in the honorarium of the BHWs is in consideration of their additional tasks next year.

By 2021, the BHWs will be taking charge of the information and education campaign on the use of herbal medicines that are approved by the Department of Health to combat Covid-19.

The locally available herbal medicines include sunting, lagundi, helbas, halilib-on, bayabas, ahos, ampalaya, lubi lubi, sinaw sinaw, and angit ngit.

In line with this, the governor encourages every barangay to have a medicinal garden.

The governor also recognizes the now bigger role of BHWs because of the pandemic.