Some 120,000 nurses in PH not in employment records, says POEA

ABS-CBN News MANILA - Some 120,000 registered nurses are unaccounted for in employment records in the country, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration said Wednesday as it explained government's deployment cap on health care workers. There are nearly 602,000 nurses registered under the database of the human resources bureau of the Department of Health, according to POEA administrator Bernard Olalia. Some 183,000 nurses are employed in public or private health facilities in the country while 350,000 nurses are deployed abroad, he said. "We therefore have a gap of almost 120,000. This is exactly the reason why the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force Against COVID-19) imposed temporary suspension of the deployment of our nurses (last year)," he told ANC's Headstart. The country had prohibited the deployment of health care workers last year as the COVID-19 pandemic began to ensure sufficient medical professionals here. It has since resumed deployment but placed a deployment cap, which it raised to 6,500 from an initial 5,000. Philippines raises overseas deployment cap on nurses, health care workers Nurses group welcomes new cap on health workers' deployment Government expects more countries will take interest in inking bilateral agreements for the deployment of Filipino health workers as a labor shortage looms, said Olalia. "This is a result of the pandemic and due to the fact that in the destination country they are feeling also labor shortage with respect to nurses," he said. The top destinations of Filipino nurses are the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Japan, Olalia said. Germany is "lobbying" for an exemption to the cap similar to what has been granted to the UK, German-Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Stefan Schmitz earlier told ANC.

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