ILO: Pinoy nurses prone to recruitment abuses

MANILA, Philippines - Not only Filipino domestic helpers, but even Filipino nurses and other health workers are prone to recruitment abuses, the International Labor Organization (ILO) reported yesterday.

Citing recent studies, ILO said skilled and educated foreign healthcare workers, including Filipinos, are vulnerable to recruitment violations.

“While going through the recruitment process, foreign nurses experienced modification of contracts without their consent, withholding of contracts as well as other immigration documents by recruiters,” the ILO noted.

ILO said many foreign healthcare workers are not familiar with the positions they were recruited for and their alien workplace prior to arriving at their destination.

According to the ILO, demand for registered Filipino nurses has been increasing since 1997, with the highest deployment recorded in 2011.

ILO said the Philippines posted the second highest deployment peak in 2001, with most of the nurses recruited for the United Kingdom.

With the recent decline in the recruitment of Filipino healthcare professionals in Europe and North America, the deployment had shifted in recent years to countries in the Middle East.

The Philippine government reported an average of 12,000 Filipino nurses leaving the country annually to seek employment with higher wages.

While migrant healthcare workers from developing countries are contributing to the healthcare sector of developed countries, ILO said the migration of professionals and skilled workers from developing countries has negatively affected the development potentials of the countries of origin.

ILO said the phenomenon called “brain drain” of highly skilled nurses and even doctors who opted to work as nurses abroad had been observed in the past decade.  

The migration of healthcare professionals had an impact on the achievement of health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which relies on the national healthcare system built on sufficient, quality and competent health professionals.

To address the problem, the ILO, with $3-million funding support from the European Union, is implementing a program called “Promoting Decent Work Across Borders: A Project for Migrant Health Professionals and Skilled Workers.”

ILO said the project seeks to better understand schemes in line with circular migration of health professionals.

With the project, ILO hopes to promote approaches to migration that benefit the migrant workers, the source and destination countries within a rights-based framework for better labor migration management.

The project focuses its activities on three Asian countries with significant outflows of health professionals and skilled workers – the Philippines, India and Vietnam.