CLMMRH to get
multi-billion boost
P185M IN EQUIPMENT FOR NEGROS, TOO
BY ADRIAN NEMES III

The Department of Health aims to make the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital in Bacolod City “an honest to goodness modern up-to-date medical center” with architectural plans expected to be out by February or March, DOH Secretary Enrique Ona said yesterday.

There is no definite estimate yet on the cost of the modernization of the CLMMRH that will increase its bed capacity from 400 to about 600 to 650, but it could be about P3 to 3.5 billion, Ona said.

Meanwhile, the DOH is giving the Negros Occidental provincial government a P50 million Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, which is used in detecting and delineating tumors and in providing images of the brain, the heart, and other soft-tissue organs.

Philippine National Police chief, Nicanor Bartolome, yesterday ordered the Police Regional Office-6 and the Bacolod City Police to identify and arrest the suspects who shot and killed a police drug operative in the presence of his daughter in Bacolod City at about 7 a.m. Thursday.

Bartolome went to the wake for slain Police Officer 3 Rolando Malate at the Rolling Hills Memorial Chapels in Bacolod City and met with the late policeman’s family and gave them financial support.

Malate, 43, of Celine Homes Subdivision in Brgy. Estefania, Bacolod had brought his children Ramon Jr., 15, and Hannah, 14, to Tay Tung High School and was on his way to a coffee shop at the junction of Hernaez and Jovita streets, near the school with his younger daughter, Alexa, 10, when one of two men riding in tandem on a motorcycle shot him at close range while he was about to alight from his car.

Twenty three luxury vehicles, reportedly stolen in Metro Manila and other areas of the country, were recovered by the PNP Highway Patrol Group in its anti-carnapping operations in Negros Occidental recently.

PNP chief Director General Nicanor Bartolome yesterday commended the HPG for the recovery of the stolen vehicles through their intensified and renewed drive against car theft syndicates.

Bartolome said the recovery of the 23 stolen vehicles in Negros Occidental and six others in Cagayan de Oro was the biggest accomplishment of the HPG in recent years.