Susan Ople
Migrant Workers Secretary Susan Ople urged the Department of Health (DOH) to agree to “ease” the annual limit on the deployment of nurses and health-care workers overseas, where they are “highly valued and highly compensated.” Ople disclosed that the DOH has created an inter-agency technical working group to discuss, among others, the deployment cap on nurses. The government through the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration has limited the deployment of newly hired nurses this year to 7,500. Since 2020 when the pandemic struck, the government has at first suspended, then later put a limit to the new hiring of Filipino nurses and health-care workers by foreign employers, fearing the country might run short of nurses. “The position of the DMW is, [the deployment cap] should be eased; not totally eliminated but rationalized,” Ople said.