THE Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is open to easing the deployment cap for Filipino health care workers (HCW) bound for the United States (US).
In a recent online forum, Labor Attaché Angela Librado Trinidad said the request was made by the Philippine Association of Medical Technologists (Pamet) amid the large demand for medical technologists in the US.
Pamet is the biggest group of medical technologists.
It estimated the US is currently in need of 110,000 medical technologists and may also need 2.5 million additional nurses due to a large number of retiring nurses in US in the coming years.
Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said he is willing to consider the proposal once he gets the official request from Pamet.
“We are not in receipt of such request,” Bello told BusinessMirror in a SMS last Sunday.
After going to DOLE, the request will be forwarded to the IATF before it could be acted upon by President Duterte.
Currently, only the United Kingdom (UK) has been granted by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) an exemption from the 5,000 deployment cap for Filipino HCWs this year.
DOLE said the German government is asking for a similar exemption.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) imposed the deployment cap in January to ensure the government will have a sufficient pool of HCWs for addressing the Covid-19 pandemic.