Deployment ban on health workers violates Constitution —Locsin

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Saturday hit the temporary deployment ban of Filipino workers abroad as a violation of the Constitution.

@DFAPHL Filipino NHS nurses were stopped at NAIA from returning to their contracted jobs in the UK. This violates the Constitution in 3 ways: right to travel, inviolability of contracts, punitive ex-post facto resolution. BI Com Morente powerless to help. I'm helping him. HELP!!!

— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) April 11, 2020

In a Twitter post, Locsin said Filipino National Health Services nurses were stopped at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) from returning to their contracted jobs in the United Kingdom.

The Foreign Affairs chief said “this violates the Constitution in 3 ways: right to travel, inviolability of contracts, punitive ex-post facto resolution.”

Locsin said that Bureau of Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente is “powerless to help.”

“I’m helping him. HELP!!!” he said.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) passed a resolution that suspended the deployment of health workers “until the national state of emergency is lifted and until the COVID-19-related travel restrictions are lifted at the destination countries.” 

The deployment ban is meant “to support the national objective of controlling the spread of COVID-19 through the regulation in the deployment of Filipino healthcare workers through mission critical skills (MCS) framework and to prioritize human resource allocation for the national healthcare system at the time of the national state of emergency.”

In an earlier post, Locsin said the POEA is “wrong, dead wrong, and violating the Constitution.”

Well they are wrong, dead wrong, and violating the Constitution. https://t.co/dmKKVBgZt1

— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) April 10, 2020

The Foreign Affairs chief also said that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) will fight the ban in the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases and in the Cabinet.

The fight is not over. We will fight the ban in the IATF. We will fight the ban in Cabinet. We will fight shit for brains. We will never surrender our constitutional right to travel and our contractual right to work where there is need for our work. https://t.co/pokjlCs6Cf

— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) April 11, 2020

“We will never surrender our constitutional right to travel and our contractual right to work where there is need for our work,” Locsin said.

He noted that Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said that the DFA representative at the POEA Governing Board did not object the resolution, which made it unanimous.

“Well I, as SECRETARY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, object to it and fill up the silence of the DFA representative. I REJECT THIS ABOMINATION,” he said. —Ted Cordero/KG, GMA News