Nurses surplus sign of bad decisions, says wage commish

A key official of the national wage commission said on Thursday that the current oversupply of registered Filipino nurses is a manifestation of “erroneous decision-making and manpower-planning" from both the public and private sectors, including families. In a statement, National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) Executive Director Ciriaco Lagunzad III said the surplus of nurses is not only an issue of training and deployment, but also of poor planning. The NWPC is an attached agency of the Labor and Employment Department. “Parents should guide their children in choosing what college program to invest into, something that could give a balanced ratio of supply and demand, and could thereby brush off the idea to work overseas," Lagunzad added. The NWPC also pointed out that the problem of some hospitals requiring registered nurses to work for free or pay “training fees" to get work experience is only one of the effects of the imbalanced supply and demand ratio of registered nurses. Late August, Health Secretary Enrique Ona ordered government hospitals to stop “volunteer programs" that take in registered nurses, sometimes for a fee. According to Lagunzad, the government created programs so nurses may get work experience, giving them the option to work overseas. “So if they are given experience and just compensation, and if they qualify for employment outside [of the country], the supply may subside," said Lagunzad. In August, Ona revealed government plans to hire 10,000 nurses willing to serve rural communities for a year. The program, Registered Nurses for Health Enhancement and Local Services (RN HEALS), aims to address the country’s nurse employment program while extending much-needed patient care to those in rural areas and public hospitals. — BC/ELR, GMA News