The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) has distributed approximately 1,800 patient transport vehicles in the first three years of the Marcos administration, more than triple the roughly 600 units that previous administrations gave over an entire six-year presidential term.
PCSO General Manager Melquiades “Mel” Robles made the disclosure in an interview on DZRH News program Special on Saturday on September 19, describing a distribution approach that inverted the traditional model of waiting for requests.
Robles said previous administrations distributed ambulances in small batches over six years—in his words, “in dribs and drabs”—while PCSO under the current administration proactively reached out to every municipality and province, including fifth-class municipalities that had never owned a patient transport vehicle and did not even know they were entitled to one.
“Dati po ay mga 600 units lang po ang nabibigay ng buong termino ng isang Pangulo for six years. Ngayon po ay nabigyan na natin lahat, and to date mga 1,800 na po ang nabibigay natin,” Robles said.
The PCSO general manager said the shift from a request-based to a proactive distribution model meant that PCSO was calling municipalities rather than the other way around, with some local government units genuinely surprised to learn they had been allocated a unit.
“Lahat po ng hindi pa nakakatikim o nakakaranas na magkaroon ng patient transport vehicle o ambulansya ay ngayon ay hindi na ho kailangan manghingi at pumila. Kami na ngayon po ang tumatawag sa kanila. At nakakatuwa kasi yung iba hindi pa nga ho makapaniwala na sila ay merong alokasyon,” Robles said.
Each unit is fully equipped for immediate use—stretcher, wheelchair, oxygen tank, and sphygmomanometer—and comes with a deed of donation requiring the receiving LGU to maintain the vehicle, keep it serviceable, and use it only for medical transport.
He said distribution will continue as PCSO’s revenues allow, and that ideally every municipality should eventually have two units: one as primary and one as redundancy, since an emergency vehicle that breaks down with no backup is no emergency vehicle at all.
