Former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Camilo Cascolan’s appointment as undersecretary of the Department of Health (DOH) is an “insult to” and “slap in the face” of medical experts who are more qualified for the said position, according to a lawmaker and a health workers’ group.
ACT Teacher’s party-list Representative France Castro asked Malacañang to rethink Cascolan’s appointment to the DOH.
“What is Gen. Cascolan’s qualification for the health portfolio anyway? Mamanmanan ba niya ang mga progresibong health workers groups o babarilin ba niya ang Covid virus?” she asked in a statement.
“Cascolan’s appointment is a huge insult to our health experts who are most qualified to administer and run the affairs of the DOH,” the Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) said in a separate statement.
AHW said Cascolan’s appointment is a clear proof of the Marcos administration’s “extreme lack of concern for the lives, health, safety and welfare of the health workers and the entire Filipino nation.”
The group added that the new DOH undersecretary was also “one of the brains” of the previous administration’s deadly campaign against illegal drugs. Cascolan crafted the controversial Duterte anti-drug campaign “Oplan Double Barrel”.
“Health workers prefer an Undersecretary who has a clean tract record, not a red-tagger, one whose hands are not tainted with the bloody drug war and one who truly upholds the rule of justice,” the group said.
— Ronald Espartinez