CLARK FREEPORT — Philippine Red Cross chair Sen. Richard Gordon said yesterday nurses should be better compensated “as their salaries are not commensurate to their labor” despite a law that sets minimum of P30,531 pay for them.
Gordon noted that a nursing course requires about P500,000 for tuition and other expenses up to the board exam.
“Yet, an entry-level nurse only receives a salary of P8,000 to P13,500 monthly, despite the law that says that the minimum base pay of nurses working in the public health institutions shall not be lower than salary grade 15 or P30,531 per month,” he said in a statement.
Gordon lamented that “the government promised them SG-15 pero hanggang ngayon, hindi pa rin nakukuha. Mali iyan. Dapat once you pass the exam, it is the duty of the government to give you opportunities. Once nurses graduate and become licensed, they should be hired by the government at a proper pay,”
He urged local government units to allocate “reasonable budget for nurses while dispatching them to places in the country where health care services are needed.”
“We need to create a cycle. We want our nurses to graduate and be paid well to serve our people then after two or three years, they can go abroad. Program for language and culture training of their chosen country should also be made accessible to them. Dapat magturo tayo ng Nihonggo. The population of Japan is getting old. They will need nurses and you must learn also their culture,” he explained.
This, even as Gordon also said that nurses have good opportunities to land jobs in Japan and Germany which, he noted, “is currently hiring 200,000 Filipino nurses until 2020 to fill up their manpower needs in the healthcare sector.”
Unless nurses get decent pay in their own countries, they are likely to flee for jobs abroad, he said.
