Locsin hits ban on health care workers to go abroad

MANILA, Philippines — Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. broke ranks with the administration to denounce the continued ban on health-care workers who want to resume or start working abroad amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Locsin denounced the deployment ban as unconstitutional even as he urged legislators and the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) to take the cudgels for medical professionals whose right to travel and work overseas have been denied.

“Either the Senate calls it out or the useless IBP takes the ban to [the Supreme] Court instead of challenging the watery PH version of the US Patriot Act,” Locsin decried on Twitter on Aug. 19, referring to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020.

—Dona Z. Pazzibugan