A Philippine passport sits atop the Union Jack flag of the United Kingdom. INQUIRER.net STOCK IMAGE
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on Tuesday announced that more employment opportunities await Filipinos in the United Kingdom (UK) as they open their recruitment in the financial sector.
“Based on the job orders that we have been receiving, there are emerging opportunities for our overseas Filipino workers here in the financial sector,” said London Labor Attaché Amuerfina Reyes, as quoted in a statement on Tuesday.
“We can see an increase in the demand for accountants and auditors. Another opportunity is up for those seasonal agriculture workers in the potato farms,” Reyes added.
Aside from the demand in the financial sector, Reyes also mentioned that the labor office is still getting more job orders and contracts for senior health care workers due to the pandemic.
“Here in [the] UK, there is a big demand for nurses and healthcare-related jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they saw the need for this. They prefer to hire Filipino workers first not only for our good work ethics but because we work passionately from the heart,” she said.
She noted that there are about 13,000 Filipinos employed in the health care sector, citing data from the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council.
By 2024, Reyes said the UK needs about 50,000 nurses.
She also commended the UK for providing Filipinos with a good working environment. Upon arrival in the UK, Reyes said Filipinos are offered vaccination once they finish their quarantine period.
In March, the Philippine government approved the UK’s request to be exempted from the cap on Filipino nurses allowed to leave the country for jobs overseas.
The government had limited the number of nurses who could work overseas to 6,500 a year to ensure that it would not run out of health workers during the pandemic. — Sofia Vertucio, trainee