Health Secretary Francisco Duque III yesterday said he will look into reports that the former chief of the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital in Bacolod City who was supposed to have been transferred to the Department of Health office in Cebu has still been seen at the CLMMRH and in the company of the DOH appointed management team.

Jerry Basiao, the lawyer of Bryan Baylon, the suspended administrative officer of CLMMRH, said that despite the public pronouncements of the DOH that Vega was transferred, they have seen no such action taken and he has in fact, been seen at the hospital. But Jaime Bernadas, the newly appointed CLMMRH chief who heads the DOH-appointed management team, said Vega briefly dropped by his office on Tuesday to inform him that he was leaving for Cebu already.

Basiao, meanwhile, said they are also studying possible action to be taken in what he called the ransacking of Baylon's office at the CLMMRH.

Bernadas, however, denied that the office was ransacked.

He said an official notice was sent to Baylon which he would not receive asking him to surrender to key to his office so it could be opened, and word was also sent to him through emissaries.

It is a public office and public property, Barnadas said.

He said that, they opened Baylon's office in the presence of the police, witnesses from Hospital Watch and the auditors.

We conducted an inventory of its contents and we looked for some missing papers needed by the hospital, he said.

Basiao also said a team of lawyers was also assisting Baylon with his defense after his suspension by the DOH despite his having blown the whistle on corruption at the hospital.

We are not doing this just for Bryan but so the problem of corruption at CLMMRH will be addressed for the good of the public who use the hospital, he said. "We do not want to see a whitewash in the handling of the hospital problems," he added.*CPG

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