CONTRARY to earlier reports, the British government has not imposed a ban on the hiring of Filipino nurses seeking jobs in the United Kingdom.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) made the clarification Tuesday based on report submitted by the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in London in connection with the UK’s new hiring policy that will take effect starting August 14, 2006.

Labor Secretary Arturo Brion explained that under the new policy, UK employers intending to recruit nurses from abroad are first required to advertise in the UK their job vacancies, particularly for “General Nurses,” based on the UK’s recent removal of the said category from its “Shortage Occupation List.”

The new policy, Brion added, would mean that UK employers, both the National Health Service (NHS) and independent health providers would have to satisfy first the resident labor market test before they can recruit general nurses from abroad, including Filipino nurses.

“Employers recruiting general nurses will have to demonstrate that they cannot fill up the requirement or that no resident nationals were considered suitable,” Brion said.

The new policy does not cover the following categories of nurses which were still included in the shortage occupation list: audiology, sleep/respiratory physiology, neurophysiology, operating theater nursing, clinical radiology, pathology and critical care.

Brion also cited the earlier pronouncement of the UK health minister, Lord Warner, that the change will make no difference to foreign nurses currently working in the UK.

“Thus there is no truth to reports that Filipinos have been displaced in the UK even as our POLO in London has confirmed that not a single Filipino nurse there has lost her job as a result of these developments,” Brion said.

Labor Attaché Jainal T. Rasul, in his report, quoted the projection of the UK’s Royal College of Nursing that some 150,000 UK nurses are due to retire in the next five to 10 years, and foreign nurses are expected to continue to complement the UK’s own nursing workforce into the future.

Rasul further said that aside from specialist nurses, there are other skills categories that remain on the UK’s Shortage Occupation List, which include midwives, railway engineers, structural/bridge engineers, transportation/highway engineers, CAA-licensed aircraft engineers and veterinary surgeons.

At present, Rasul said, there are some 40,000 Filipino nurses working in the UK’s health-care system, half of whom are already permanent residents or British citizens.
--William B. Depasupil