Labor chief apologizes to nurses, lawmakers

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III on Thursday apologized to lawmakers who criticized his request for COVID-19 vaccines from the United Kingdom, but insisted he did not intend to exchange nurses for vaccines.

In different media interviews, Bello said his intention was to make sure that nurses who may be deployed to the United Kingdom would be inoculated before they leave.

‘Positive’ response

The United Kingdom has requested the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) for exemption from the 5,000-limit on the number of nurses who can be deployed this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bello said he received a “positive” response in writing from the British Embassy on Wednesday, but declined to share because he still had to show it to President Duterte.

“If they felt hurt, I apologize. But that was not my plan. So many people are criticizing when they don’t know the real picture,” Bello said in a television interview.

In a phone interview, he denied that the request for vaccines was a form of trading nurses for vaccines.

Other workers

“I can understand their concern if they were misinformed that they thought I [would] barter our nurses [for] vaccines,” Bello said.

“But I hope before they accuse me, I wish they asked me first to find out what really happened and they did not just criticize since there is no truth to their accusations,” he said.

Bello met last week with British Ambassador Daniel Pruce, who requested to hire thousands more Filipino nurses due to the pandemic.

Germany has also requested to hire thousands of Filipino nurses, but Bello said he has had no recent talks with the German ambassador.

“I told the [British] ambassador: In case I recommend [an exemption to the deployment limit], I want to see to it that before we deploy our nurses, we are assured of their safety and the best way is to vaccinate them before they go there,” Bello said.

He said he included other Filipino workers who would be deployed elsewhere in the vaccine coverage.

“We have received a reply. I will give the letter to the President by Monday. Positive,” Bello said on television.

Later, over the phone, Bello said he would show the letter to the President on Friday.

“If they want to be exempted from the [deployment] cap, I said: for me to be able to recommend it to the [Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases], I have to be assured of the safety of our workers,” he said, referring to the Cabinet-level pandemic policy group.

“The only way we can be assured of the safety of our [migrant workers] is [we give them] the vaccine before we deploy them. For that purpose, they may want to send the vaccines so we could have the nurses vaccinated before we even deploy them to the [United Kingdom],” he said.

Bello said he did not state the quantity of vaccines.

“I said if they are going to give [vaccines], maybe these will not only be for health-care workers but for all our [migrant workers]. If they agree, we will see how many [migrant workers] will be given their vaccines,” he said.

“I just want to be sure that those who will be deployed have already been vaccinated,” Bello said.