Saudi needs 1,000 nurses

ROY C. MABASA

September 5, 2011, 6:50pm

MANILA, Philippines — About 1,000 nurses are needed to fill vacant positions in at least 12 military hospitals in the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), recruitment agencies based in Manila announced.

Representatives from the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation (MODA), Al Hada Hospital, and King Khalid Military City Hospital-Hafr Al Batin are also slated to visit the country by mid-September to interview some 300 Filipinos for work as nurses, medical technologists, dental surgery assistants, phlebotomists, CSSD and other allied medical positions.

The deployment of Filipino nurses to Saudi Arabia has risen from 5,926 in 2004 to 9,956 in 2009. It declined slightly in 2010 with 8,771 nurses. This year, salaries of nurses in military hospitals in Saudi are projected to increase by 15 to 20 percent.

The LBS Recruitment Solutions Inc. announced that hospitals in Jeddah need experienced nurses in specialty and clinical wards with at least two years of experience in intensive care unit, operating room, Pediatric, Orthopedic, Hemodialysis/Renal Center, Emergency, OR/RR, Oncology, Endoscopy, Neuro, Hematology, Ob-Gyne, Rehabilitation, Infectious Control, Medical Surgical, Cardiac Cath Laboratory, and other areas.

Also needed are dental assistants, dental technologists, pharmacists, laboratory technicians,, medical transcriptionists, medical secretaries, and medical record clerks.

These jobs are needed in such institutions as the Specialist Hospitals, International Medical Center and King Fahad Armed Forces Hospital; King Faisal Research, Security Forces Hospital in Riyadh; Al Hada Military Hospital Program in Taif; and King Khaled Military City Hospitals in Hafr Al Batin.

Meanwhile, using the popular online social networking and micro-blogging Twitter website, Saudi nationals have launched a "Be kind to foreign workers" campaign, eliciting praises from the Filipino community there.

According to Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona, the tweet campaign has been initiated by Turki Al-Dakhel, a Saudi journalist, writer and TV program presenter.

Dakhel is also an influential figure on Twitter with more than 123,000 people following him. He lauched the campaign on the occasion of Eid el-Fitr celebration that started last Aug. 30.

“This is the least we can do toward this group of people during Eid. The foreign workers need moral support which is more important to them than earning money,” Al-Dakhel was quoted as saying.

One Saudi blogger asked Saudis to respect their housemaids who were living with them and were sharing their joy during Eid.

He asked people to stop referring to their housemaids as “servants,” saying better words should be used instead. “We can use better titles or call the housemaids by their names,” he said.

Fadeelah said housemaids should be considered as natural members of the family. “They live with us for a long time. We should not humiliate or disrespect them. They have left their homes in a quest of a better living. We should respect and treat them humanely,” he said.

A number of Saudis participating in the campaign also told stories about results of good and bad treatment of housemaids, citing in this connection the cases of murder and vindictive actions that resulted from maltreatment.

Monterona and his group welcomed the campaign as they expressed their appreciation to the Saudis for raising the social awareness of respecting migrant workers rights and well-being.

He said expatriate workers such as Indians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Indonesians, and Nepalese have also expressed positive feedback and reaction on the tweet campaign.

“It is a call grounded on humanitarian concerns, recognizing the indubitable contribution of foreign workers on the socio-economic progress of the Saudi society, thus it gains widespread support among the Saudis,” the OFW leader said..

Monterona said he is hoping that the campaign will lead to the reduction of abuses, maltreatment and labor malpractices, often cited as grounds why migrant workers, mostly housemaids, run away from their employers.

“We are also hoping that the campaign will get the attention of the host government and eventually lead to the implementation of foreign workers-friendly labor policies such as the adoption of the recently passed International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention on domestic workers rights and inclusion of domestic workers on its labor laws,” he pointed out.

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