Drilon, Villanueva nix DOLE plan to send Filipino nurses for COVID-19 vaccines

At least two senators on Wednesday said they are not in favor of the Department of Labor and Employment’s plan to deploy more Filipino nurses and other health workers to the United Kingdom and Germany in exchange for COVID-19 vaccines.

In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon slammed DOLE’s proposal, saying it is “borne out of the growing exasperation over the lack of COVID-19 vaccines in the country.”

“Bakit tayo umabot sa ganito?” Drilon said. “It’s a sign of desperation. Ganito na ba tayo kadesperado?”

He said DOLE’s initiative is “a wrong policy and sets a bad precedent.”

“Our health care workers are not commodities they can trade off,” Drilon said.

“For the government to go this far as trading off its Filipino health care workers in exchange for vaccines means something is not right in the government's coronavirus vaccination strategy,” he added.

Further, Drilon urged DOLE to abandon the policy.

“Hindi po kasama sa mandato ng DOLE ang ‘palit bakuna.’ Our focus should be on protecting the rights and welfare of our overseas Filipino workers especially during these trying times.”

For his part, Senator Joel Villanueva also said DOLE’s plan is “clearly out of desperation.”

“Kung ginawa lang po sana ng IATF ang kanilang tungkulin, hindi sana mapipilitan ang DOLE na dumiskarte. So again, I do not question their motives but their means. They were thrown in that situation because some people dropped the ball,” he said in a statement.

“I have no quarrel with the personalities, but I disagree with the proposal. OFW deployment is not a barter trade. We simply do not swap people for products,” he added.

Alice Visperas, director of DOLE's international affairs bureau, earlier said the country was open to lifting the cap in exchange for vaccines from Britain and Germany, which it will use to inoculate outbound workers and hundreds of thousands of Filipino repatriates.

However, it was reported that Britain’s health ministry was not interested in entering into such an agreement. Currently, the national government is imposing the 5,000-cap on overseas deployment of health workers.

Also on Wednesday, UK’s top diplomat rejected such plan.

“I’d say we’ve got no plans to link vaccines with those conversations around the recruitment of nurses,” UK Ambassador Daniel Pruce said in a virtual chat with reporters.

Without providing specific details, Pruce confirmed meeting with Labor Secretary Silverstre Bello IIII on the Philippine proposal a few weeks ago, but said the UK prefers to assist developing nation’s access to COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility. — RSJ, GMA News