Filipino health workers are still prohibited from working abroad — except for those with employment contracts as of March 8, 2020 — Malacañang said Thursday in light of the calls from medical workers seeking jobs overseas.
The inter-agency task force on the pandemic response has limited the deployment of health workers abroad to those with employment contracts as of March 8, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said.
He said the health workers who are in the Philippines only for a vacation were also allowed to return to their jobs abroad.
“Health professionals with OEC [overseas employment certificates] issued by POEA and have verified employment contracts as of March 8, 2020, can leave the country,” Roque said.
Roque on Thursday also appealed to the nurses’ sense of nationalism to stay while the country faced a public health emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He made his appeal after Filipino Nurses United sought the lifting of the deployment ban as many of them remained unemployed.
He said the government was already providing healthcare workers additional benefits such as risk allowance, P15,000 for those who get infected with COVID-19, life insurance, free accommodation and transportation and free and frequent testing.
Roque’s announcement was a reiteration of the government’s policy of limiting the deployment of health workers to those with existing contracts.
At the onset of the pandemic, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration barred the deployment of Filipino health care workers abroad, with only those with perfected and signed employment contracts abroad as of March 8, 2020, allowed to leave the country.
But groups of nurses and medical workers have called on the government to lift the deployment ban.
The Philippines, a key exporter of nurses and other medical workers, is seeking to keep a reserve force of medical workers as it battles the COVID-19 pandemic.