Envoy: UK needs more health workers

CEBU, Philippines - Demand for healthcare workers in the United Kingdom (UK) remains strong despite the worldwide threat of job retrenchments due to global economic crunch.

British ambassador to the Philippines Peter Beckingham assured that UK will continue to need health-workers, especially nursing professionals from the Philippines, saying “people continues to get sick.”

Aside from healthcare workers, which include nurses, and caregivers, Beckingham said demand for hospitality workers, and entertainers are also strong. This would mean, job opportunities for hotel workers, singers, musicians are growing, although UK is not spared from the global economic slowdown.

Recently, the Ambassador said that UK has changed its requirement system for visa applications. “We are now very much open for Filipinos going to UK,” he said.

 Currently, there are 250 thousand Filipinos living and working in Great Britain, majority of them are employed as health workers.

He said that Filipino nurses and other healthcare workers in the United Kingdom are keeping their jobs. In fact, demand is continuously growing.

Annually, there is a 20 percent increase of Filipinos applying for work or residency in United Kingdom, Beckingham attributed this growth, due to strong demand for Filipino healthcare workers, and other hospitality and entertainment job related, and the much easier requirement for visa processing.

Moreover, the increasing awareness of some Filipino families in sending their children to study in UK also help push up the increasing number of Filipinos going to the UK every year.

What concerns him though is the declining demand for seafarers, and shipping crew demand is getting thinner.   

“With the global downturn there aren’t enough requirements for containership,” Beckingham said. Thus, he feared that there will be some Filipino seamen working for British shipping companies that will be affected by the downturn.

However, the Ambassador has not provided concrete details on this matter, such as official report that indicates Filipino seamen being retrenched by a British shipping company.

Meanwhile, Beckingham added that the Philippines is not considered as the favorite site for medical tourism among British.

“A lot of them [British medical tourists] go to Spain, Germany and India, not really in the Philippines,” he said.

He said because of proximity, it is still expensive for British medical tourists to consider the Philippines as their destination of choice to seek medical attention at the same time having vacation.