“Insensitive and dehumanizing” was how former vice president Jejomar “Jojo” Binay described the proposal to provide more Filipino nurses to the UK and Germany in exchange for COVID-19 vaccines.
Binay was reacting to the offer of Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III to Germany and UK to provide the Philippines with COVID-19 vaccines in trade for deployment of more Filipino nurses in the said countries.
“Our nurses are not commodities to be traded,” the former vice president said in a statement on Wednesday (February 24).
“Government keeps insisting we have enough money to pay for vaccines, so why even consider using our nurses to secure donations from the UK and Germany?”
According to him, the government can utilize its discretionary fund, and re-align the billions it has allocated to the NTF-ELCAC (National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict) to purchase more vaccines, if it wanted to.
“Hindi po mga bagay na ikakalakal ang ating nurses kapalit ng bakuna. Ang dapat gawin ng gobyerno ay ayusin ang management ng vaccine procurement (Our nurses are not commodities that you could exchange for vaccine. What the government should do is fix the management of the procurement of vaccine),” Binay reiterated.
Bello had reportedly informed Germany and the UK that the Philippine government may exempt them from the deployment cap if they would agree to the agency’s requests.Due to the pandemic, the Philippine government has regulated the number of nurses who can work abroad as the country needs them badly during these trying times.The demand for nurses in European countries soared because of the COVID-19 pandemic.