‘Scrap cap on deployment of health workers abroad’
AS a fresh batch of nearly 10,000 Filipino nurses tries to enter the US labor market, a lawmaker said last Sunday that the enforcement of a cap on overseas deployable healthcare workers is against the Constitution.
Rep. Michael T. Defensor of Anakalusugan renewed his call for the scrapping of the 7,000 annual cap on overseas deployable healthcare workers.
“We maintain that Filipinos enjoy the right to live and work wherever they can achieve the best quality of life for their families,” Defensor said in a statement his office issued last Sunday. “Our healthcare workers are entitled to sell their skills to the highest-paying employers around the world— whether in the United States or in the United Kingdom.”
According to the solon, another batch of 9,788 Philippine-educated nurses managed to take the US licensure examination for the first time in 2021, despite tough movement restrictions associated with the lingering pandemic.
The number is higher by 63 percent compared to the 6,004 Philippine nursing graduates that took America’s eligibility test, or the NCLEX, for the first time in 2020, excluding repeaters, Defensor said citing figures from the US National Council of State Boards of Nursing Inc.
The NCLEX, or the National Council Licensure Examination, is usually the last hurdle in America’s nurse licensure process. Nursing graduates pay $200 to take the NCLEX in a testing center in Makati City and other locations around the world.
Defensor said the number of Philippine-educated nurses taking the NCLEX for the first time is considered a good indicator of how many are trying to obtain employment in the US.
“If we want at least some of our future nursing graduates to practice their profession here at home, we really have to improve in a big way their starting pay and benefits,” the solon said.
Defensor, meanwhile, renewed his call for the passage of House Bill 7933, which seeks to increase by 78 percent, or to P62,449, the entry-level monthly pay of all nurses employed in Philippine government hospitals.
At present, he said their initial monthly pay is only P35,097 at Salary Grade 15.
Under the bill that seeks to amend the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002, the starting pay of government nurses shall be bumped up by six notches to Salary Grade 21.
Soon after the Covid-19 pandemic began in April 2020, the lawmaker said the government banned 14 groups of newly-hired healthcare workers with missioncritical skills—doctors, nurses as well as operators and repairmen of medical equipment—from leaving the country.
Defensor explained that ban was lifted in December 2020 and replaced with an annual cap of 5,000 overseas deployable healthcare workers. The yearly limit has since been enlarged to 7,000 but remains in force.