"The pay hike for nurses is relief long overdue, but a relief nonetheless."
A memorandum circular from the budget department says some P3 billion has been earmarked for the pay increase of government nurses. We welcome this announcement.
Entry-level nurses will now be salary grade 15—P32,953 to P34,801 per month—from salary grade 11, or P22,316 to P24,391.
The pay hike is overdue as health professionals have been at the forefront of battling COVID-19 since early this year. As of last week, some 3,643 health workers have been found ill with the virus; some 1,293, or a third, are nurses.
In many hospitals across the country, many nurses have been threatening to quit their jobs because they were overworked, under-protected and underpaid.
They have not been getting support so that they could do their jobs well while protecting their own and their families’ health.
The pay hike, in fact, had been sought prior to the pandemic, highlighting how nurses have been struggling to make ends meet even during “ordinary” times. Imagine how much more support they need these days.
With the battle against the dreaded virus, nurses’ responsibilities—and distress—have increased exponentially. Aside from anxiety over the greater number of patients, they also worry about their families, their transport to and from their place of work, potential discrimination, and work prospects of other members of the family who may have become unemployed.
Certainly, this relief is long overdue—but it is relief, nonetheless.
We wonder how soon the additional pay can be felt by the nurses. Recall that the government has said it was setting aside assistance of P1 million for the families of each health worker who dies of the virus. After a while, it was revealed that the help had not yet reached the intended beneficiaries. How have Health authorities addressed this, we wonder.
We hope this won’t be the case for the nurses’ pay. They, despite hardship and danger, continue to show up for work every day in fulfillment of their sworn duty to the public.
Indeed this is the least the government can do for those at the forefront of this daunting war.