House allays fears of no pay hike for nurses

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives has assured government nurses that the national government would be fulfilling its promise to increase their basic pay, despite the Department of Health (DOH)’s inability to include the belated Supreme Court ruling mandating the wage hike during its budget deliberations.

Rep. Mike Defensor of party-list Anakalusugan said despite the hike’s exclusion from the DOH budget, the national government could still source funds for it from the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund of the national budget.

“If that fund is not enough then (the Department of Budget and Management) can increase appropriation for that purpose,” Defensor said.  

The lawmaker added that while there was also the possibility that this could not happen with deliberations still ongoing in the Senate, “we can immediately increase with the SSL (Salary Standardization Law) as stated by the President.”   

“I spoke to Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano about it and he is already coordinating with Sen. Bong Go of the Senate committee on health and the DBM to discuss possibilities. He assured me that the increase will definitely happen,” Defensor said.

“Hopefully and possibly this year or latest is next year with the approval of the law,” he added. 

Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, chairman of the House appropriations committee, can coordinate with the DBM on this issue so that funds can be released for such purpose.

In an interview with The Chiefs over 24-hour Cignal cable news channel, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said they were not able to include the budget for the pay increase of nurses because they had not factored in the favorable SC ruling during the budget deliberations. 

The low pay of Filipino nurses has also cut in half the number of nursing graduates in the past two school years, according to government data.

The exploitation and low pay of highly skilled Filipino nurses are the primary reason why enrollment in nursing courses among collegiate schools across the country continues to dwindle, Defensor said. 

“The number of our nursing graduates is now going downwards. On the average then, we used to have about 15,000 to 20,000 graduates. But now, it has gone down to only 9,000 for the past two years,” he told reporters in a briefing.  

And as the national government moves to prevent further the exodus of nurses going abroad for greener pastures by substantially increasing their pay, Defensor lamented that even the private sector in the health industry has been exploiting nurses as well.  

“They are really pitiful and it’s very unfortunate that even those nurses in the private sector are still receiving as low as P9,000 monthly salary,” he said, when government nurses have already been complaining of their P20,754 entry-level monthly salary.  

“We will be pushing for the increase, either this year or next year,” the party-list congressman vowed, by elevating the current Salary Grade 11 to 15 as endorsed by the Supreme Court when it acted favorably on a nurses’ group’s petition.  

SG 15 is equivalent to P30,531 under the government’s Salary Standardization Law. 

Defensor noted that no less than the SC acknowledged the disparity in the pay scale of nurses employed in government, but was only limited to ruling in nurses’ favor and could not compel government as it would encroach on the independence of a co-equal branch.  

The SC recently upheld the validity of the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002, which bumped up to Salary Grade 15 (P30,531) the minimum pay of nurses retained by the national government, mostly in hospitals run by the Department of Health. 

Nurses employed by local governments are also expected to benefit from the ruling, though their higher entry-level pay would be less than P30,531, and would instead depend on how big the province, city or municipality is.