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(Eagle News) — The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said it had issued “show cause orders ” to 13 local government officials who had received vaccines against COVID-19 ahead of the prioritized health care workers or medical frontliners.
DILG Undersecretary for Operations Epimaco Densing III said that of the 13 LGU officials who had been issued show cause orders, 11 were mayors, one was a governor and the other one was a councilor
He said that a team of evaluators from the DILG and from the Department of Health (DOH) will be studying the reasons submitted by the local officials.
If the reasons given are not acceptable, they will charged before the Office of the Ombudsman, Densing said.
The DILG had earlier issued show cause orders to five LGU officials: Mayor Alfred Romualdez of Tacloban City, Leyte; Mayor Dibu Tuan of T’boli, South Cotabato; Mayor Sulpicio Villalobos of Sto. Niño, South Cotabato; Mayor Noel Rosal of Legazpi City, Albay; and Mayor Abraham Ibba of Bataraza, Palawan.
Densing said the DILG Central Office had so far only received the answer of Mayor Rosal of Legazpi City. He said that the answers of the four other local officials could be still in the DILG regional office.
The DILG official said that if the reason given by local officials is to set an example to convince other health care workers to get vaccinated, this is not a good enough reason.
He noted that the thousands of health care workers who had earlier been vaccinated and did not get any adverse reactions should be enough to convince other frontliners to get the jabs.
But Densing said that they would still study the answers given by the local executives.
Under the revised rules by Malacanang, senior citizens and those with comorbidities could already be vaccinated simultaneous with health care workers.
(Eagle News Service)
