Admin
17th October 2002, 16:22
Over 100 Pinoy nurses exploited in UK private nursing homes
AS the Labor department continues to encourage the deployment of skilled Filipino nurses to Europe, many here have limited knowledge of occasional but alarming cases of Filipino nurses who have become victims of exploitation and other oppressive cases in the United Kingdom.
The British media have written and broadcast reports on the harrowing plight of these Filipinos.
Philippine ambassador to London Cesar Bautista, in a March 2 signed e-mail letter, confirmed reports from Filipino groups and the British media that over a hundred Filipino nurses are victims of abusive UK employers.
In an e-mail interview, Allen Reilly of the Filipino Community of Croydon and Caulsdon said that he and religious and lay Filipinos have rescued Filipino nurses from "contracts made in hell," and from abusive employers that treat these nurses "more like slaves--all for the sake of profit."
Aside from Filipinos, African, Chinese, Indian and Sri Lankan nurses are also victims of what Reilly calls a "multi-million-peso, -pound or -dollar industry".
"I have met Filipino nurses that have paid the Philippine recruiter P300,000 for the privilege of coming to the UK to work as a domestic servant," Reilly said.
Harrowing experiences
When the Center for Filipinos, the Philippine National Council of Representatives from the UK and Ireland (PNCR), and the Association of Filipino Nurses (AFN) organized the Second Nurses Forum on November 26 last year in London, four Filipino victims shared their harrowing experiences. These details were contained in a report on the forum furnished to CyberDyaryo by Ambassador Bautista.
One nurse testified that she was supposed to work in Buckinghamshire but was not sent there. The nurses also testified that they had different contracts from the ones they signed in the Philippines.
Similar to the plight of five nurses rescued by UNISON in Swindon (see related story), the four nurse-victims narrated that they lived in caravans that had no amenities inside them--for which they paid 200 pounds monthly rent. They also had to work for more than 40 hours during their adaptation period, and would earn their employer’s anger when they dared to complain.
The radio arm of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) reported, in the Internet version of a December 4, 2001 story, reported that that "hundreds of highly-qualified Filipino nurses (working) in the UK are being forced to pay as much as 4,000 pounds to corrupt overseas agencies to secure a job."
The BBC report added that the experiences of some Filipino nurses there have been "shocking and degrading".
In the same BBC report, an anonymous victim said that she lives in a caravan near a pub. "If we want to go to the toilet, we have to go to the pub. But in the morning, we can’t do that because the bar is still closed," the nurse tearfully narrated.
She had been promised work in a National Health Service (NHS) hospital after three months adaptation at a private nursing home, but she still works in that nursing home as a lowly-paid care assistant.
Many people in Manila, however, do not know about these cases. "We have been aware for quite some time that the level of factual knowledge and concern in Manila, about the conditions of employment and living for a minority of OFWs in Britain and Ireland is quite limited," said Don Brennock of the Dublin, Ireland-based Filipino-Irish Association, in an e-mail interview with CyberDyaryo.
Monitoring the situation
In his e-mail letter, Ambassador Bautista said that the Philippine embassy has been monitoring the situation since the first new batches of Filipino nurses arrived in 1999. The embassy has coordinated with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and the UK National Health Service (NHS) to clarify recruitment regulations for nurses.
Since then, Bautista’s office, with the help of Filipino community volunteers, trade unions, and the media, identified the following generic problems facing Filipino nurses in the UK: contract substitution, ambiguous terms relating adaptation period, small private nursing homes, breach of work contracts, poor working conditions, wrong visas given by the United Kingdom embassy, the nurses’ poor adjustment to the UK, and placement fees.
Even the International Council of Nurses (ICN), based in Switzerland, has taken note of these problems by Filipino nurses in the UK. In the May-July 2001 Internet edition of ICN’s newsletter Socio-Economic News (SEW News), it was reported in the story "Recruitment abuses: Broken promises or bad faith?" that, according to Filipino nurses brought to the UK to ease chronic staff shortages, "a series of promises over wages and accommodations have been broken since their arrival".
Contract substitution is a major problem, Reilly said in a letter to the London-based newspaper The Filipino Observer. He explained that nurses are given contracts in the Philippines to pass through the POEA. These contracts are then substituted with others upon their arrival in the United Kingdom--some even on departure from the Philippines, Reilly added.
"This practice (contract substitution) is being done by not only smaller agencies, but major international recruitment agencies. And this is being done all for the sake of greed," Reilly said.
In the BBC News’ Internet version of its December 4, 2001 report, Edna Aquino of the Center for Filipinos in London said that the "widespread" cycle of corruption, (that is) seen "at each and every level of the government" begins in Manila.
An anonymous source from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said that the nurses’ cases are cases "of underemployment"--they work as caregivers instead of professional nurses. The source added that many of these victims come from the provinces, and may have been deceptively hired. The cases may possibly involve both licensed and unlicensed recruitment agencies, the source added.
UK’s fractured regulatory system
But Aquino noted that the problems facing Filipino nurses are not just a Filipino problem. UK’s private health sector, Aquino thinks, has a fractured regulatory system.
"There is no national regulatory body--policing the industry is devolved to the (UK) local government and there is no code of conduct to guide their operations," Aquino explained.
RCN secretary general Malone, in response to the case of the five Filipino nurses rescued in Swindon, said the UK government needs "to see tough action taken under the new Care Standards Act against nurse recruitment agencies who flout good practice."
UNISON’s Prentis, in the September 11 report of The Guardian, said that the nurses’ illegal contract of employment was not unique in Britain’s private nursing home sector. But while his trade is not labeling all private nursing homes as exploitative, Prentis said that these facilities are not covered by rules of the UKCC, which he thinks is "a loophole that should be closed."
Filipino nurses there are made to ‘train’ during an ‘adaptation period’ before they can work for private hospitals or NHS facilities. These nurses are not required to pay placement fees, or have amounts deducted from their salaries for expenses such as recruitment costs or airfares.
Victims are from private nursing homes
The majority of the cases involving Filipino nurses are those who are employed in private nursing homes and not in NHS-accredited hospitals. Trade unions such as UNISON and the Independent Health Care Association (IHA) handle about 20 cases a week from nurses working in the private sector.
UNISON added that these cases must be reported to the UK Central Council for Midwives and Nurses (UKCC) to regulate the practices of these private hospitals and nursing homes.
More than 80 percent of Filipino nurses in the UK work in NHS-accredited hospitals, the rest are in the private sector, Bautista said.
Britain’s health officials have tapped medical professionals from foreign countries to ease their chronic labor shortage. The Philippines is one of the countries that has been vigilantly pursuing Britain’s markets since 1999. Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas, in a July 2, 2001 newspaper report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said that the United Kingdom needs 18,000 nurses.
Ambassador Bautista said that, based on the figures of the UK government’s Work Permits office, the total number of work permits issued to Filipino nationals, mostly nurses, grew from 3,000 (in 1999) to more than 20,000 last year. Forty percent of that number consists of nurses who have worked in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, Bautista said.
An August 13 Internet news release from Northampton General Hospital quoted official figures from the UKCC which showed that the Philippines, for the first time, has become the major source of nurse recruitment outside of the European Union. Some 3,396 nurses and midwives, as of August 2001, are now in the UK, the UKCC report said.
The latest POEA figures show that there has been a sharp rise in the deployment of OFWs, including those in the medical professionals, to the United Kingdom. From 4,867 OFWs in 2000, the government deployed 10,720 workers last year, a 120.3-percent increase.
Majority of both figures worked in England. Some 10,695 OFWs were deployed in England, from 4,834 in the year 2000. Others were deployed in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Meanwhile, estimates from the Commission on Filipino Migrant Workers (CFMW) showed that there are some 65,000 to 90,000 Filipinos in the UK of which an estimated 65 percent are women.
Majority of the Filipinos live in the London Boroughs of Camnden, Newham, Islington, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham areas, the CFMW report added.
Government’s encouragement
In the July 2001 report in the Inquirer, Secretary Sto. Tomas also said that Filipino nurses should look toward Europe because of the continent’s high demand for nurses. Aside from the UK, the Netherlands needs 44,000 nurses.
The skyrocketing salaries are a reason for this encouragement from Sto. Tomas. "I met two male Filipino nurses in London and they told me they were earning at least 2,000 pounds a month. That’s P150,000 a month," said Sto. Tomas, who added that Filipinos are much preferred "because we are more caring."
An earlier report, dated March 2, 2002, also in the Inquirer, cited Sto. Tomas’ concerns that the country might be missing out on the very high demand for nurses in the US and Europe. Even while Department of Health secretary Manuel Dayrit said that this could eventually lead to "brain drain" in the country’s health sector, Sto. Tomas said the nurses could not be faulted for this because of the low local wages.
"There are simply too many job orders," Sto. Tomas added.
In Part 2: On January 8 of this year, the Philippine and UK governments signed a pioneering agreement that assures the fair employment of nurses from the Philippines in London’s NHS trusts. The agreement, however, is not without its criticisms and problems, as it appears to highlight contradictions that might mirror the confusion provoked in both the supplying country and the hosting country by the issue of using overseas employment to solve a labor shortage.
AS the Labor department continues to encourage the deployment of skilled Filipino nurses to Europe, many here have limited knowledge of occasional but alarming cases of Filipino nurses who have become victims of exploitation and other oppressive cases in the United Kingdom.
The British media have written and broadcast reports on the harrowing plight of these Filipinos.
Philippine ambassador to London Cesar Bautista, in a March 2 signed e-mail letter, confirmed reports from Filipino groups and the British media that over a hundred Filipino nurses are victims of abusive UK employers.
In an e-mail interview, Allen Reilly of the Filipino Community of Croydon and Caulsdon said that he and religious and lay Filipinos have rescued Filipino nurses from "contracts made in hell," and from abusive employers that treat these nurses "more like slaves--all for the sake of profit."
Aside from Filipinos, African, Chinese, Indian and Sri Lankan nurses are also victims of what Reilly calls a "multi-million-peso, -pound or -dollar industry".
"I have met Filipino nurses that have paid the Philippine recruiter P300,000 for the privilege of coming to the UK to work as a domestic servant," Reilly said.
Harrowing experiences
When the Center for Filipinos, the Philippine National Council of Representatives from the UK and Ireland (PNCR), and the Association of Filipino Nurses (AFN) organized the Second Nurses Forum on November 26 last year in London, four Filipino victims shared their harrowing experiences. These details were contained in a report on the forum furnished to CyberDyaryo by Ambassador Bautista.
One nurse testified that she was supposed to work in Buckinghamshire but was not sent there. The nurses also testified that they had different contracts from the ones they signed in the Philippines.
Similar to the plight of five nurses rescued by UNISON in Swindon (see related story), the four nurse-victims narrated that they lived in caravans that had no amenities inside them--for which they paid 200 pounds monthly rent. They also had to work for more than 40 hours during their adaptation period, and would earn their employer’s anger when they dared to complain.
The radio arm of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) reported, in the Internet version of a December 4, 2001 story, reported that that "hundreds of highly-qualified Filipino nurses (working) in the UK are being forced to pay as much as 4,000 pounds to corrupt overseas agencies to secure a job."
The BBC report added that the experiences of some Filipino nurses there have been "shocking and degrading".
In the same BBC report, an anonymous victim said that she lives in a caravan near a pub. "If we want to go to the toilet, we have to go to the pub. But in the morning, we can’t do that because the bar is still closed," the nurse tearfully narrated.
She had been promised work in a National Health Service (NHS) hospital after three months adaptation at a private nursing home, but she still works in that nursing home as a lowly-paid care assistant.
Many people in Manila, however, do not know about these cases. "We have been aware for quite some time that the level of factual knowledge and concern in Manila, about the conditions of employment and living for a minority of OFWs in Britain and Ireland is quite limited," said Don Brennock of the Dublin, Ireland-based Filipino-Irish Association, in an e-mail interview with CyberDyaryo.
Monitoring the situation
In his e-mail letter, Ambassador Bautista said that the Philippine embassy has been monitoring the situation since the first new batches of Filipino nurses arrived in 1999. The embassy has coordinated with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and the UK National Health Service (NHS) to clarify recruitment regulations for nurses.
Since then, Bautista’s office, with the help of Filipino community volunteers, trade unions, and the media, identified the following generic problems facing Filipino nurses in the UK: contract substitution, ambiguous terms relating adaptation period, small private nursing homes, breach of work contracts, poor working conditions, wrong visas given by the United Kingdom embassy, the nurses’ poor adjustment to the UK, and placement fees.
Even the International Council of Nurses (ICN), based in Switzerland, has taken note of these problems by Filipino nurses in the UK. In the May-July 2001 Internet edition of ICN’s newsletter Socio-Economic News (SEW News), it was reported in the story "Recruitment abuses: Broken promises or bad faith?" that, according to Filipino nurses brought to the UK to ease chronic staff shortages, "a series of promises over wages and accommodations have been broken since their arrival".
Contract substitution is a major problem, Reilly said in a letter to the London-based newspaper The Filipino Observer. He explained that nurses are given contracts in the Philippines to pass through the POEA. These contracts are then substituted with others upon their arrival in the United Kingdom--some even on departure from the Philippines, Reilly added.
"This practice (contract substitution) is being done by not only smaller agencies, but major international recruitment agencies. And this is being done all for the sake of greed," Reilly said.
In the BBC News’ Internet version of its December 4, 2001 report, Edna Aquino of the Center for Filipinos in London said that the "widespread" cycle of corruption, (that is) seen "at each and every level of the government" begins in Manila.
An anonymous source from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said that the nurses’ cases are cases "of underemployment"--they work as caregivers instead of professional nurses. The source added that many of these victims come from the provinces, and may have been deceptively hired. The cases may possibly involve both licensed and unlicensed recruitment agencies, the source added.
UK’s fractured regulatory system
But Aquino noted that the problems facing Filipino nurses are not just a Filipino problem. UK’s private health sector, Aquino thinks, has a fractured regulatory system.
"There is no national regulatory body--policing the industry is devolved to the (UK) local government and there is no code of conduct to guide their operations," Aquino explained.
RCN secretary general Malone, in response to the case of the five Filipino nurses rescued in Swindon, said the UK government needs "to see tough action taken under the new Care Standards Act against nurse recruitment agencies who flout good practice."
UNISON’s Prentis, in the September 11 report of The Guardian, said that the nurses’ illegal contract of employment was not unique in Britain’s private nursing home sector. But while his trade is not labeling all private nursing homes as exploitative, Prentis said that these facilities are not covered by rules of the UKCC, which he thinks is "a loophole that should be closed."
Filipino nurses there are made to ‘train’ during an ‘adaptation period’ before they can work for private hospitals or NHS facilities. These nurses are not required to pay placement fees, or have amounts deducted from their salaries for expenses such as recruitment costs or airfares.
Victims are from private nursing homes
The majority of the cases involving Filipino nurses are those who are employed in private nursing homes and not in NHS-accredited hospitals. Trade unions such as UNISON and the Independent Health Care Association (IHA) handle about 20 cases a week from nurses working in the private sector.
UNISON added that these cases must be reported to the UK Central Council for Midwives and Nurses (UKCC) to regulate the practices of these private hospitals and nursing homes.
More than 80 percent of Filipino nurses in the UK work in NHS-accredited hospitals, the rest are in the private sector, Bautista said.
Britain’s health officials have tapped medical professionals from foreign countries to ease their chronic labor shortage. The Philippines is one of the countries that has been vigilantly pursuing Britain’s markets since 1999. Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas, in a July 2, 2001 newspaper report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said that the United Kingdom needs 18,000 nurses.
Ambassador Bautista said that, based on the figures of the UK government’s Work Permits office, the total number of work permits issued to Filipino nationals, mostly nurses, grew from 3,000 (in 1999) to more than 20,000 last year. Forty percent of that number consists of nurses who have worked in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, Bautista said.
An August 13 Internet news release from Northampton General Hospital quoted official figures from the UKCC which showed that the Philippines, for the first time, has become the major source of nurse recruitment outside of the European Union. Some 3,396 nurses and midwives, as of August 2001, are now in the UK, the UKCC report said.
The latest POEA figures show that there has been a sharp rise in the deployment of OFWs, including those in the medical professionals, to the United Kingdom. From 4,867 OFWs in 2000, the government deployed 10,720 workers last year, a 120.3-percent increase.
Majority of both figures worked in England. Some 10,695 OFWs were deployed in England, from 4,834 in the year 2000. Others were deployed in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Meanwhile, estimates from the Commission on Filipino Migrant Workers (CFMW) showed that there are some 65,000 to 90,000 Filipinos in the UK of which an estimated 65 percent are women.
Majority of the Filipinos live in the London Boroughs of Camnden, Newham, Islington, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham areas, the CFMW report added.
Government’s encouragement
In the July 2001 report in the Inquirer, Secretary Sto. Tomas also said that Filipino nurses should look toward Europe because of the continent’s high demand for nurses. Aside from the UK, the Netherlands needs 44,000 nurses.
The skyrocketing salaries are a reason for this encouragement from Sto. Tomas. "I met two male Filipino nurses in London and they told me they were earning at least 2,000 pounds a month. That’s P150,000 a month," said Sto. Tomas, who added that Filipinos are much preferred "because we are more caring."
An earlier report, dated March 2, 2002, also in the Inquirer, cited Sto. Tomas’ concerns that the country might be missing out on the very high demand for nurses in the US and Europe. Even while Department of Health secretary Manuel Dayrit said that this could eventually lead to "brain drain" in the country’s health sector, Sto. Tomas said the nurses could not be faulted for this because of the low local wages.
"There are simply too many job orders," Sto. Tomas added.
In Part 2: On January 8 of this year, the Philippine and UK governments signed a pioneering agreement that assures the fair employment of nurses from the Philippines in London’s NHS trusts. The agreement, however, is not without its criticisms and problems, as it appears to highlight contradictions that might mirror the confusion provoked in both the supplying country and the hosting country by the issue of using overseas employment to solve a labor shortage.