Almost 500K healthcare workers received SRAs as of Jan. 14 —DOH exec

Almost half a million healthcare workers have received their special risk allowances (SRA) amid the pandemic, an official from the Department of Health (DOH) said on Tuesday.

"For SRA ho, for December 20 (2020) to June 30, 2021, we were able to provide 496,314 healthcare workers amounting to around P8 billion po," said DOH Assistant Secretary Maylene Beltran during a congressional hearing.

Beltran said the data was as of January 14, 2022.

In her presentation, Beltran said the DOH has an additional request of more than P3 billion to provide the SRAs of 184,799 more healthcare workers.

When it comes to the actual hazard duty pay, Beltran said a total of 390,662 healthcare workers receive it. The amount released for the Active Duty Hazard Pay (AHDP) totaled to P6,555,957,185 as of January 17.

Last week, the DOH met with the Departments of Finance and of  Budget and Management to discuss the funding for the healthcare workers' SRA for the year 2022.

DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III earlier said that for 2022, the agency is asking for at least P50 billion to fund the SRAs of healthcare workers. —KBK, GMA News