UK exempted from deployment cap of health workers, says Bello By GISELLE OMBAY, GMA News

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on Wednesday said the exemption of the United Kingdom (UK) from the 7,000 deployment cap of healthcare workers abroad this year is a matter of “fortune”. In an ANC interview, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III explained that the UK was able to request for an exemption for the deployment cap prior to its implementation on January 1, 2021. The government imposed the deployment ban to ensure the safety of Filipino healthcare workers and beef up the Philippines’ medical manpower amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “I think it’s just a question of fortune. Because even before we were running out of healthcare workers, the United Kingdom government requested for an exemption. At that time, we were in a position to deploy as many healthcare workers that we want,” Bello said. After that, Bello said, they realized that they needed to set a limit on the number of the health workers being deployed as there might come a time that the Philippines would lack frontline medical personnel to help with the pandemic response. On December 10, 2021, the government announced that the annual cap for deployment of new hire health workers abroad has been increased to 7,000 from 6,500 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The exception there "is that the United Kingdom is exempted from that deployment cap. So, anytime they can receive or we can deploy nurses to UK,” Bello said. “They were just lucky na they were able to come up with a request even before we had a fear for we were running out of our own healthcare workers,” he added. The Inter-Agency Task Force earlier approved the shortening of quarantine and isolation periods of the fully vaccinated healthcare workers to five days after hospitals raised concerns on being short staffed amid rising number of COVID-19 cases. However, an organization of nurses opposed the protocol as it might be unsafe for their and their family’s health. Meanwhile, President Rodrigo Duterte has approved the release of some P1.185 billion to pay for the special risk allowances (SRAs) of healthcare workers in public and private hospitals, Senator Christopher "Bong" Go said Wednesday. Deployment to Taiwan and HK In a separate interview with CNN Philippines, Bello further said that Taiwan and Hong Kong have still not reopened their borders to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He however assured that the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) is helping take care of the migrant workers’ needs. Hong Kong announced the ban on incoming flights from eight countries, including the Philippines, from January 8 to 21, 2022, as authorities feared a fifth wave of COVID-19 infections. Meanwhile, Taiwan has barred the entry of foreign workers since May 2021 also because of COVID-19. At least 5,000 OFWs were affected due to this. “I think the reason why nagkaron sila ng temporary ban ay alam mo naman sa mga Chinese, ‘yung New Year nila, so they don’t want…na ginagamit ‘yung mga hotels. After the [Chinese] New Year, we expect na mag-open ulit ‘yun,” Bello said. (I think the reason why they implemented a temporary travel ban is because of the Chinese New Year. But after this, we expect them to reopen.) The Chinese New Year is on February 1, 2022. OWWA earlier said that it would monitor airports for possible OFWs who will be stranded due to the two-week flight ban imposed by Hong Kong, and would help provide them with food and accommodation. Bello thus asked the migrant workers yet to be deployed in Taiwan and Hong Kong to further wait as they will reopen their borders soon. He added that the DOLE has also settled the issue regarding the testing and quarantine requirements for OFWs to enter these territories. “Maliwanag sa usapan namin with the Taiwanese ambassador na walang sasagutin ‘yung mga OFWs. Dapat ang managot diyan ‘yung agencies or the employers,” he said. (It is clear in our discussion with the Taiwanese ambassador that the OFWs need not to pay for these. The agencies or employers should be the ones to do so.) If the OFWs are being pressed to pay for their testing and quarantine expenses, Bello said that they can directly report their agencies or employers to the DOLE or the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. —LBG, GMA News

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