Several countries have indicated their interest to hire additional Filipino health-care workers (HCW) amid the pandemic, prompting the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to consider raising its 5,000 deployment cap for such workers.
POEA Administrator Bernard P. Olalia said “traditional markets” of Filipino HCWs, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have signified interest to hire more Filipino HCWs.
However, currently only UK has formalized it request to be exempted from the deployment cap, which was granted by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
Olalia said they would still be conducting consultations with other concerned government agencies and stakeholders to determine if they would recommend raise the deployment cap.
“We still have no exact figure to recommend [for a higher cap]…We have to first review our needs here and the demand abroad,” Olalia said in an online news briefing on Wednesday.
POEA imposed the 5,000 deployment cap last January to ensure the country could have sufficient pool of HCWs to help in the government’s response to the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.
“We have yet to reach the [5,000] cap. Our [HCW] deployment is only at 3,000 from January up to now,” Olalia said.
The POEA official said they expect to exhaust the remaining slots in the deployment cap by next month.
On Thursday, Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said in an online briefing that the Inter Agency Council for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases has yet to discuss increasing the HCW deployment cap.
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