Brunei seeking exemption from PHL deployment cap

BRUNEI is now also seeking an exemption from the country’s existing deployment cap for Filipino health-care workers (HCW), according to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).

Labor Attaché Melissa C. Mendizabal of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (Polo) in Brunei Darussalam said two hospitals in the Southeast Asian country are eyeing to hire 200 nurses and 30 doctors.

She noted Brunei employers prefer to hire Filipino HCWS to fill up the said positions.

“The salary is comparable to the salary of nurses in Singapore. Nurses receive high take-home pay because of the free accommodation and transportation. If they render overtime work, they earn as much as 2,000 Brunei Dollars per month,” Mendizabal said in an online news briefing last Friday.

She noted Brunei reiterated the request last July after its initial appeal for exemption in 2020 was not approved by the government.

Currently, only the United Kingdom and HCWS covered by government-to-government hiring arrangements are exempted from the deployment cap.

Preferred workers

ASIDE from HCWS, she said Brunei employers want to hire Filipinos for: oil- and gas-related jobs; household service workers (HSW); and, semiskilled workers, such as car technicians of high-end vehicles

“At the moment, we are in semi lockdown, but once we go back to normal, almost all sectors want to hire our OFWS [overseas Filipino workers],” Mendizabal said.

Based on data from the Polo, there are currently 20,000 OFWS in Brunei.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) imposed a deployment cap for HCWS last January to ensure the country will have a sufficient workforce for its novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) response.

Last week, the POEA clarified there were around 900 available remaining slots from the 6,500 deployment cap for HCWS this year.

This after DOLE initially said all of the said slots for the deployment cap this year were already exhausted.

Labor officials said the deployment cap is already unlikely to be increased this year due to the “perceived” shortage of HCWS.