'Unfair' to make nurses stay in PH if there are no good-paying jobs--Guanzon
Rowena Guanzon (MANILA BULLETIN)
P3PWD Party-list nominee Rowena Guanzon thinks it's "unfair" to force Filipino nursing graduates to stay in the Philippines for a given period of time before they could pursue greener pastures abroad. Guanzon aired this hot take via tweet, which as of this posting has been liked almost 1,700 times. "Why require nurses to serve at least 1 yr before going abroad ? Without good paying jobs here , that would be unfair," the outspoken former Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner wrote. The emigration of Filipino nurses is a perennial concern of government. Reports said that from January to March 2023, a record 11,013 nursing graduates from the Philippines took the United States (US) licensure examination for the first time. To halt this kind of brain drain, policy-makers and legislators have often proposed to require local nursing graduates to work in the Philippines for a certain number of years before they are allowed to apply for openings abroad. Guanzon apparently doesn't agree with this tactic. In a tweet last week, Guanzon lamented that unemployment in the country was high.