DOH confirms exit of Vergeire, 2 officials
Three undersecretaries of the Department of Health (DOH), including its spokesperson at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, are no longer with the agency.
The names of Maria Rosario Singh-Vergeire, Achilles Gerard Bravo and Kenneth Ronquillo have been taken off the list of members of the Executive Committee (Execom) on the DOH website. The Execom is composed of Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa and his undersecretaries and assistant secretaries.
Vergeire, Bravo and Ronquillo are all Career Executive Service Officers or Cesos, which entitles them to security of tenure.
They may be separated from the service—but only after undergoing due process—for just cause, through voluntary resignation or if dropped from the rolls.
DOH spokesperson Assistant Secretary Albert Domingo confirmed that the three undersecretaries were no longer part of the agency, although he refused to disclose the reason for their departure.
Privacy cited
“Decisions of Execom members leading to their separation from the service (e.g., retirement, resignation, etc.) are personal in nature and treated with the utmost respect as to privacy,” he said in a message on Sunday.
The Inquirer has learned that Bravo and Ronquillo reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 for civil servants in January and April, respectively.
But they held their positions—Bravo as undersecretary of the internal management cluster, and Ronquillo as undersecretary for the Universal Health Care (UHC) policy and strategy cluster—in a holdover capacity until June. There were no announcements about their retirement from the DOH.
Vergeire, on the other hand, will only be 57 years old in November. She has eight more years in the service, or until 2033, when she will reach the mandatory retirement age of 65.
The Inquirer reached out to Vergeire for comment, but she has yet to respond as of writing.
Vergeire served as the DOH spokesperson during the pandemic.
Voice of reason
In a profile, the Inquirer described her as “the calm and steady voice lending reason and sobriety to these anxious times.”
At the onset of the Marcos administration, she served as DOH officer in charge for almost a year, before the President appointed Herbosa as health secretary.
Vergeire joined the DOH in 2007 after working for 11 years at the Marikina City health office.
Upon becoming DOH secretary, Herbosa said he appointed Vergeire to be “the chief of all the undersecretaries that are in charge of our operations of all the different regions,” overseeing fellow undersecretaries for the area clusters for the National Capital Region and southern Luzon, northern and Central Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.
She would later be relegated to the position of cluster head for northern and Central Luzon.
From June 2023 until her departure, Vergeire was appointed to different posts such as head of the health regulation and facility development cluster, lead of the special concerns cluster and UHC policy and strategy cluster.
Domingo, meanwhile, confirmed two new appointees to the DOH Execom, including Gregorio Murillo Jr., former mayor of Tago, Surigao del Sur, who was appointed as undersecretary for health facilities enhancement and infrastructure management and special concerns.
Current DOH Assistant Secretary Farwa Hombre was also promoted to undersecretary, handling concerns on the nursing profession, in addition to gender and development, plus traditional and alternative health care. Hombre is the only nurse among the Execom members.
