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According to a statement released by Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri on Friday, there is no question that Filipino nurses will choose to remain in the country if they are paid competitively.

“They have no choice but to leave if they don’t receive pay and benefits that are proportional to the labor that they perform; they want to be with their families and serve our people, but they also need to make a fair life,” he said.

In response to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s order to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to solve the nursing shortage brought on by migration, Zubiri made the comment.

Small private hospitals, according to him, pay their nurses as little as PHP15,000 to PHP20,000 per month and are “likely overworked, caring for more than their fair share of patients as their colleagues move for richer pastures abroad.”

Zubiri asserted, “Our pay and benefits offer no competitiveness. Abroad, they make somewhere between PHP150,000 and PHP200,000 a month. Who can blame them for leaving?”

The long and short of the diaspora issue that we’re facing is that “if we want nurses to stay in the country, we need to improve their salaries,” “Said he.

Prospero de Vera III, the chair of CHED, listed the many initiatives the Commission has made to address the issue.

According to De Vera, those who failed the nursing board exams are being retrained, non-practicing nurses are being directed, exchange programs are being held with other nations, and a nursing curriculum with exit credentials has been adopted.

Senator Pia Cayetano made the suggestion during a recent hearing of the Committee on Sustainable Development Goals, Innovation, and Futures Thinking that professionals, particularly those in the medical field, who completed their education through various government scholarship programs should be required to work domestically rather than abroad.

Although the government must provide for the education of its citizens, Cayetano said that it is unjust to the taxpayers to permit government scholars to begin employment overseas as soon as they graduate.

“Education should be accessible to everyone, but for those who want to become doctors or nurses, we spend and I intend to invest even more resources to ensure that they have really even better education, better facilities, and better equipment. So, if they are leaving, then we really need to discuss this,” Cayetano said.

Some people are averse to talking about it because they could feel bad, sullen, or furious. She said, “Eh, why should [the government] spend for you if you won’t work here?”

The Department of Health (DOH) provided data to the committee that indicated that 13,467 qualified Filipino health workers leave the country each year or around 10%.

A total of 156,605 nurses were classified as temporary migrants from 1990 to 2017, and 17,491 were regarded as permanent migrants.

The DOH claimed that there is now a 350,000 nurse shortage in the Philippines.

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