Nurses now opting to work in RP call centers, as medical transcriptionists
Philippine Star
Many Filipino nurses are now opting to stay in the country, not to work in hospitals but in call centers.
The local recruitment industry reported yesterday that a number of licensed nurses are now employed either as call center agents or medical transcriptionists, which offer higher salaries than government-run or even private-owned hospitals in the country.
“Call centers offer a starting salary of P15,000 plus a signing bonus of P20,000, which is hard to refuse especially with private and government hospitals offering a minimum salary of less than P10,000 monthly,” Federated Association of Manpower Exporters (FAME) vice-president Jackson Gan disclosed.
Gan said there are some hospitals in the country that even employ nurses on a daily basis and provide salaries below the minimum wage.
He said the growing number of nurses opting to work as call center agents is one of the reasons why the local recruitment industry is having difficulty filling up the high demand for nurses overseas.
“We have a surplus of nurses in the country, yet there are huge vacancies that remain unfilled until this time,” Gan said.
Based on data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), there are at least 20,000 unfilled job orders for Filipino nurses in the Middle East, Singapore and various European countries.
“Even the POEA, which has current job orders for 5,000 nurses from Saudi Arabia, was only able to fill up 50 percent of the requirement last year. There are also demands from Norway and Belgium,” Gan said.
According to Gan, the country lacks nurses who have at least two-year work experience in 250-bed hospitals, a requirement for nurses applying abroad.
Gan further noted that many unemployed nurses are selective and would only want to work in the United States and rejected outright job offers from the Middle East.
To be able to fill up the job requirements overseas, Gan called on the government to upgrade the public hospitals where newly licensed nurses can undertake their two-year training.
– Mayen Jaymalin
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