AN additional 1,500 health-care workers (HCW) have been allowed to be deployed abroad.
This developed as President Duterte approved the proposal of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to extend the exemption period for the said workers from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration’s (POEA) temporary deployment ban from March 8, 2020 to August 31, 2020.
The announcement also came a day after a BusinessMirror report that more than a thousand Filipino skilled nurses who have been accepted to work in German hospitals remain stranded in the country since April due to the deployment ban on HCWs.
“Health professionals, who were able to complete their documentation as of August 31, 2020 were allowed by the President to work abroad,” Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in an online briefing on Monday.
“According to DOLE, this will benefit 1,500 nurses and other health professionals,” he added.
Roque explained the President made the decision in consideration of those medical workers, who already spent for their processing only to be covered by the deployment restriction.
However, President Duterte currently still has no plans to totally lift the deployment restriction for medical workers, according to Roque.
Last April, POEA released an issuance stopping the deployment of workers from 14 medical categories.
The measure, which was approved by the Inter-Agency Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), is part of the government’s initiatives to ensure the country would have sufficient number of medical workers for its Covid -19 response.
Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said the President’s decision would allow more Filipinos to work.
“I will advise POEA administrator [Bernard] Olalia to facilitate processing of the papers of the nurses and medical workers under the August 31, 2020 exemption,” Bello told the BusinessMirror in a text message.
For the past five months, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. has been vocal regarding the ban on health-care workers. The foreign affairs chief said he had appealed to all concerned agencies to lift the ban.
Locsin tweeted that nurses have the constitutional rights to travel and encouraged them to find employment abroad since local hospitals pay them a “pittance.”
Recruitment expert Manny Geslani said one of the requirements to be accepted in Germany is to be able to speak German and these stranded nurses studied the language—funded by German employers—in order to qualify. However, their proficiency to speak German has slowed down due to lack of practice.
“Since these nurses have been out of work for the past two years and out of the national health-care system in preparation for their German job offers, finances of the nurses have also virtually dried up,” he said.
“Their German employers who funded their language studies and who sent them allowances to tide them over while waiting for the government to lift the deployment ban to Germany have grown tired of waiting,” Geslani added.
Geslani said that the nurses took 10 to 12 months to study the language, with a few retakes, and have been issued visas for Germany.
“However, with the onset of the deployment ban for health-care workers the nurses could no longer pursue their overseas travel.”
Sen. JV Ejercito earlier asked the IATF to lift the ban, tweeting, “Some facts regarding the issue on the ban on health-care workers particularly nurses.”
He said there are more than half a million nurses in the country but both public and private hospitals can only employ 89,000. “It will be cruel not to let the 400,000 nurses seek employment, currently idle, lift the ban,” the senator said.
Scrap total deployment ban
PrisoNurses, an informal group of nurses affected by the deployment ban, also, meanwhile, thanked the President for extending the exemption period.
The group, however, said they remain hopeful President Duterte would eventually decide to scrap the total deployment ban, which they said, continue to hinder many health-care workers from finding employment abroad.
“The deployment ban which has been existing for more than six months already has brought numerous sacrifices and struggles for most of our nurses and their loved ones,” the group lamented.
“So we implore your help and beseech you (Mr. President) to lift the ban totally, so the rest of those who are still affected can start with their lives anew,” they added.