160,000 Pinoy nurses unemployed

THERE are no jobs available for more than 160,000 registered nurses in the country, a Department of Health official said on Wednesday.

Ruth Padilla, nursing consultant to the Health department, said that the government is incapacitated to employ the country’s over 160,000 nurses because the government’s rationalization plan is yet to be approved by the Department of Budget and Management.
The rationalization plan was proposed five years ago.

“We need support so that we can employ our nurses. At this point, the government cannot over employ. Employing 160,000 nurses is impossible,” Padilla told a hearing of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education on the problems affecting nursing graduates, nursing students and nursing schools.

“The rationalization plan’s approval would increase the plantilla positions in the different government hospitals and local government units’ community health centers which will also increase employment,” she said.

Representatives of the Philippine Nurses Association and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) also told the committee that lack of jobs for professional Filipino nurses and the mushrooming of nursing schools have resulted in registered nurses working as mere “volunteers” in hospitals, where they perform the tasks of a regular staff nurse.

The only difference is that volunteer nurses do not get any salary.
Worse, the volunteer professional nurses have to pay the hospitals from P3,000 to P8,000 for a slot to work there.

That practice is a violation of Republic Act 9418, or the Volunteer Act of 2007, which states that a volunteer, while not entitled to a salary, should be provided with food and travel allowance of the entity he or she volunteers for.

“It is OK to volunteer but to make them pay is worse than involuntarily servitude. This is worse than being a slave,” committee vice chairman
Rep. Emil Ong of Northern Samar said during the hearing.

Given the situation, Padilla warned Filipino students on nurturing the mindset of taking a nursing course to be able to work abroad and earn high salaries.

“At first, they are willing to work [here] for experience, hoping that they will have the opportunity to work abroad. The reason that they took up nursing is they are looking for greener pastures. That is the mindset of our nursing students. But the times have changed. It is not that easy anymore to go to the US and other countries to work as a nurse,” she said.

The Health department received on Monday a list of hospitals allegedly charging exorbitant fees to volunteer nurses, but it was yet to counter-check if such claims are true.

CHED also promised to standardize hospital and training fees for professional and graduate nurses alike by June 2011.

Displaced workers
If there is any good news in the employment front, it is the availability of about 6,000 jobs for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) displaced in Libya and other strife-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz also on Wednesday said that the US Embassy in Manila has organized a three-day job fair that will gather 33 American firms from March 18 to 20, 2011 at SM North Edsa in Quezon City with 6,600 local vacancies up for grabs for interested workers, especially those displaced in strife-torn countries.

“The three-day US Embassy-sponsored activity dubbed the ‘America in 3-D Job Fair,’ would prioritize qualified OFWs earlier evacuated from Libya,” she added.

Various American companies in the Philippines joining the fair will include those in banking-retail with 818 job opportunities and business process outsourcing (BPO) and call centers offering about 3,000 vacancies.

Other US firms will also offer jobs in the information technology (IT), engineering, hotels, energy, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and semiconductor industries.

Positions to be offered will include card and bank sales officers, customer service representatives, BPO agent and non-agent positions, engineers, machinist, electricians, marketing staff, human resources generalists, accountants, technical officers, IT specialists and analysts.

Baldoz disclosed during an earlier hearing by the House Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs that at any given time, there are some 60,000 vacancies posted by local and overseas companies in the PhilJobNet system supervised by the Bureau of Local Employment of the Department of Labor and Employment.

She said that skilled and qualified OFWs from Libya may access the PhilJobNet website at http://phil-job.net.

Baldoz added that the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority has also readied a skills assessment effort to fully assist the skills development, retooling and upgrading needs of OFWs returning from strife-torn countries. –Llanesca T. Panti, Reporter, Manila Times