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Nurses Press Government for Jobs, Decent Pay and Outright Ban of ‘Volunteer for a Fee Training’ Scheme

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Nurses Press Government for Jobs, Decent Pay and Outright Ban of ‘Volunteer for a Fee Training’ Scheme


 “If you take the proper nurse to patient ratio in this country more than 364,000 nurses are actually needed…but owing to the volunteer-for-a-fee practice of private health facilities, compounded by the low government budget for health… the Philippines finds itself today in a situation where it has seemingly surplus nurses but it also has a pressing need for their services.”
By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – After a House resolution was passed last month urging President Benigno Aquino III to halt the “exploitative practice of collecting training fees from professional and registered nurses under various forms of ‘volunteer training programs’ by public and private hospitals”, hospitals reportedly got alarmed. “They stopped for a while, but now they’re coming back with different methods of ‘volunteer training for a fee’”, said nurse Leah Paquiz, president of an organization of nurses called Ang Nars.

Some hospitals have also retaliated against young nurses who exposed the volunteer/training-for-a-fee scheme.

“Forty-six of us nurses who had paid the hospital for our ‘training’ were dismissed when we made it known to the country that we are ‘volunteers’. It’s very wrong but nurses can’t speak out for fear of being blacklisted,” said Philip So Chan. Chan has a visa and could have opted to work abroad but he chose to remain in the country to “develop health care here.” His noble intention was repaid by being forced to swalow the volunteer-for-a fee scheme so that he could gain work experience to qualify for a full-time regular nursing job.

Under the guise of specialty training, some hospitals today have continued the “volunteer for a fee training scheme,” which has been happening in the Philippines for more than a decade now. This highly irregular scheme was exposed only recently and is being opposed more strongly and openly by nurses’ groups with the support of progressive lawmakers..... MORE

SourceBulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/03/05/nurses-press-government-for-nursing-jobs-decent-pay-and-to-ban-volunteer-for-a-fee-training-scheme/

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