Exploitation of RP nurses in New Zealand justifies Jpepa rejection
Pinoy Overseas | 12 March 2008
Exploitation of RP nurses in New Zealand justifies Jpepa rejection
MANILA, Philippines - The reported exploitation of Filipino nurses in New Zealand gives a reason for the Senate to reject the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement, according to the Philippine Nurses Association.
Leah Paquiz, PNA president, said Filipino nurses who would be recruited to Japan under the Jpepa could suffer the same consequences as those brought to New Zealand as trainees.
“This is one of the reasons why we are opposing the Jpepa. When Filipino nurses leave for abroad as trainees, they are susceptible to abuse by the very nature of their insecure status,” Paquiz said in a statement.
“We must make sure that when our nurses are recruited as nurses, they really practice their profession as nurses and that they are protected by the highest possible labor standards,” she stressed.
On Tuesday, Dennis Maga, project coordinator of Employment Relation Education (ERE) in NZ, warned Filipino professionals, particularly nurses planning to migrate and work in New Zealand to carefully study the contracts they are entering into so they would not be added to the increasing number of Filipinos being abused there.
Maga said his group has been receiving reports about Filipinos falling victims to recruiters who switch or substitute work contracts and charge exorbitant fees.
The group Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia said it is extremely lamentable that some of the Filipino nurses have to live in New Zealand in “slave labor conditions” as described by authorities.
Ronnel Lim, program officer of HCWH, said Filipino nurses have all the skills to practice the nursing profession in the Philippines. However, it is deplorable that they are recruited as nurses, and yet they are serving time in New Zealand as caregivers in which they are not trained to do.
“This is why it is essential that the trainings and the tests required for foreign nursing practice be made available here in the Philippines so that our nurses can comply with the requirements here. We need to insist in our labor bilateral arrangements with other countries that all the requirements/trainings necessary for nursing practice abroad be made possible to comply here in the Philippines,” he said.
“These bridging courses and language trainings, such as that in New Zealand, are very easy to abuse. They can effectively reduce our nurses to perpetual trainees on seasonal schemes,” he added.
The New Zealand Herald recently reported about the flight of Filipino nurses who were allegedly underpaid, had fallen victims to loan sharks and ended up accused of not complying with contracts.
The report added that Filipino nurses were brought in to New Zealand on student visas by private English language schools and trained solely for aged care instead of doing bridging courses to become registered nurses.
Paquiz, in a previous interview, said that under the proposed Jpepa, “a qualified Filipino nurse will not be accorded the status of a full-fledged Japanese nurse practicing in Japan. A qualified nurse with three solid years of work experience will go to Japan to become a trainee for up to three years.”
Filipino nurses are likely to get an allowance for a trainee, having no employment rights because they are neither employees nor workers under Japan’s Immigration Control Act.
“The Philippine government should turn down the treaty. If Japan truly needs nurses and is not just dangling the possibility of Japanese employment as a sweetener to Jpepa, it should equal the offer we get from other countries, where we are accorded equal status as the local professionals,” Paquiz said.
The Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA) also urged the senators to junk the Jpepa because of the concerns over safety and security of health workers in Japan, particularly the caregivers.
The Senate is expected to vote on Jpepa in April after a month-long Lenten recess starting Friday.
