The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) may no longer hike the deployment cap for overseas health-care workers (HCW) amid a “perceived” shortage in the local labor market.
DOLE’s Technical Working Group on Mission Critical Skills (TWG-MCS) made the conclusion after reviewing the available pool of HCWs in the country.
Labor Assistant Secretary Dominique R. Tutay, also member of TWG-MCS, explained that while there are currently a large number of available medical workers in the country, there are those who either remained unemployed or those who are employed on jobs not related to health care.
“That is why we did not [recommend] to raise [the deployment cap] because there is already this perceived supply gap,” Tutay said.
Fewer board passers
She said this was worsened by the onset of the pandemic last year, which disrupted the conduct of licensure exams for several health-care professions.
The labor official noted that if more medical workers will be able to pass the board exams this year, the TWG-MCS may consider recommending a higher deployment cap.
Last January, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) imposed the 5,000 deployment cap for HCWs to ensure the country would still have a sufficient pool of workers for its Covid-19 response.
It was later increased by POEA to 6,500.
Earlier this month, Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III recommended to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to increase the cap by another 1,500 to allow more medical workers, particularly nurses, to work abroad.