Category: Philippine News

DOLE: More opportunities for Filipino doctors and nurses in UK

More Filipino health care workers can now take the advantage of the expanding labor market opportunities in United Kingdon (UK).

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said the UK government has lifted its standard in offering visas to nurses and doctors under its migration policy Tier 2, making ready for the entry of more Filipino professional health care workers to UK.

Prior to the entry of nurse-applicants to UK, they are required to achieve an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score of 7.0, and pass a two-part competency examination made out of Computer-Based Test (CBT), which is available in different nations, including the Philippines.

Likewise, applicants must take the Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE), which is done in England.

Based on the report from the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in London, nursing professionals keep on dominating the deployment profile of Filipinos heading off to the UK, with 1,446 or 94.9 percent out of the 1,524 OFWs deployed for the year 2017.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) is in the process of discussing the methods of sending of Filipino health care professionals, based on the proposed draft bilateral agreement given by the Health Education England (HEE).

As of December 2017, there are 75,787 Filipino workers in the UK generally professionals and highly-skilled from the healthcare and engineering industries.

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COA: ‘Yolanda’ projects split to favor 1 Contractor

The Commission on Audit (COA) has discovered irregular the award of P654.6 million worth of housing projects for individuals displaced by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” to a contractor whose permit did not authorize it to take on such big-ticket projects.

In its 2017 yearly review report, the COA encouraged the National Housing Authority (NHA) to sue its failing officials and the still anonymous contractor of eight housing projects in the towns of Balangiga, Hernani and Quinapondan in Eastern Samar.

Auditors found that adjacent projects in the three sites were split into eight smaller contracts to “accommodate” the developer, whose Philippine Contractors Accreditation Board license approved it to secure construction deals worth as much as P100 million.

Had the contracts not been split, the total cost would have been P133.2 million for Balangiga, P286.6 million for Hernani and P234.7 million for Quinapondan.

For the COA, this implied the contractor surpassed its P100-million limit.

The COA said the NHA violated the Government Procurement Reform Act.

It also found that 10 Yolanda Permanent Housing Program projects, worth P852.7 million, progressed very slowly because the NHA granted contracts to a developer that had few workers and equipment.

The contractor—also not named in the report—ended up delaying the project.

The status reports showed showed that the contractor’s due date was extended 33 times, or a total of 2,761 days.

Regardless of this, the projects were not finished.

The COA said this was ground for end of the contract.

The NHA did as such for nine of the 10 contracts on Nov. 15, 2017.

But auditors questioned the NHA’s inability to gather damage payment from the contractor as punishment.

The NHA, in its reaction to the COA, admitted that the adequacy of the contractor’s manpower and equipment was “not fully monitored.”

It said it found the issues simply after the issuance of site memorandum reports that directed an increase in deployment of workers.

However, it included that it had been stricter in enforcing the manpower and equipment requirements as well as requests for expansion of due dates.

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