‘Manananggal’ in Marikina among 297 unfinished health centers
Like a “manananggal”—the female vampire of Philippine myth who grows batwings to prowl the night skies, but only with her upper body taking flight and leaving the lower half standing stiff on the ground.
That’s how Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa described a supposed four-story “super health center (SHC)” in Marikina City—one already marked “completed” on paper.
But like a manananggal whose torso had yet to return, the project looked practically abandoned and only had “legs”—steel rebars erected for the building’s foundations—as signs of accomplishment.
Herbosa came up with the metaphor on Wednesday during a field inspection at Barangay Concepcion Dos in Marikina, where he and other Department of Health (DOH) officials came across one example of an SHC that remained unfinished despite being funded way back in 2021.
The DOH chief said they had so far found 297 unfinished or nonoperational SHCs out of around 500 projects inspected.
“[S]uper health centers began (construction) in the year 2021. Many were built; I think there are a few that were finished, completed and (became) operational. But I have in my list now, after investigating, nonoperational and nonfunctional (centers),” he said.
Will tell ICI
Some of the projects, including the Marikina SHC, were reported “completed” in the DOH monitoring but were later found to be just partially done.
“I was asking for completed projects only… but apparently some of those (marked) ‘completed’ meant that they had completed phases only. That’s their terminology,” he said.
Herbosa said the DOH would report its findings on Friday to the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI), the fact-finding body looking into anomalous public works projects.
During the inspection in Marikina, the DOH officials found the SHC site with only the steel rebars jutting out of the ground, rusting away and covered in vegetation like the rest of the lot.
“What should I call this, it’s like a manananggal, right? There’s no upper part, only a lower part,” Herbosa said.
According to the DOH chief, construction for the Marikina SHC began in December 2023, with a funding of P21.5 million for its first phase.
Causes of delay
The project got stalled when the original contractor failed to turn over documents, concerning the completed parts of the first phase, to the next contractor in charge of the second phase, which covered the first floor, Herbosa explained.
The health secretary did not identify the contractor who caused the delay, saying it was the local government that served as the implementing agency of the project and oversaw the bidding and procurement processes.
Modifications made by the local government to the original plan of the SHC also contributed to the delay, Herbosa recalled.
Initially, the plan was to build a two-story health facility, but the local government preferred a bigger, four-story building to maximize the use of the land, he said.
The building envisioned under the new design, which Herbosa said would be more similar to a hospital than to a village health center, was expected to cost a total of P180 million, on top of the P21.5 million already spent for Phase 1.
In a statement issued later on Wednesday, the DOH said a medium-sized health facility could be built for only P12 million.
According to Herbosa, the Marikina project did not go through the usual process of approval before it was granted funding by the DOH.
He said “an insertion” for it suddenly appeared in the agency’s budget back in 2022.
“It’s not well-planned,” he said. “The normal process is you submit your request to the regional office, the regional office will submit it to the central office, and then we put it in our [National Expenditure Plan].”
“This one, it’s like a bubble, it just appeared in 2022,” he added, without elaborating.
‘Misleading claim’
In response to Herbosa, the Marikina City government—currently headed by Mayor Maan Teodoro—issued a statement on Wednesday taking issue with the health department’s “misleading claim” about the inspected project.
“The facts are clear. The DOH-released funds covered only the first phase of the project—foundation and structural works—and the City of Marikina completed this phase in full, as certified by the DOH itself,” the local government said in a Facebook post.
“It is therefore misleading and irresponsible for the DOH to claim that the entire facility could have been finished using such limited funds.
Despite follow-ups from the city, no additional funding from the succeeding phases has ever been released by the DOH, it added.
The city government said it would resume construction of the SHC using its own funds to ensure residents would receive “the quality health-care services they rightfully deserve.”
In a Senate hearing earlier this month on the proposed 2025 budget of the DOH, it was revealed that of the 1,099 SHCs scheduled for construction from 2021 to 2024, at least 319 projects with a total cost of around P3 billion remained either unfinished or nonfunctional. Herbosa gave an updated figure during Wednesday’s inspection. —WITH A REPORT FROM MARY JOY SALCEDO
