By Leilanie G. Adriano
Staff Reporter
The
Provincial government of Ilocos Norte (PGIN)
will be hiring at least 100 registered nurses to be deployed in the province’s
district hospitals and rural villages for six months.
With hundreds of thousands of
unemployed licensed nurses desperate for work, the Ilocos Norte government
launched its “Sagip Nars” program to help them gain temporary employment
while seeking better job opportunities here and abroad.
On March 27, about a hundred
young registered nurses attended an orientation meeting at the
Provincial Capitol for the said program.
An initial screening and
interview was held March 28.
According to Nicole Rudio,
Provincial Employment Services Office (PESO) head, the hiring of registered
nurses is also a part of the Task Force Trabaho program meant to reduce unemployment
in the province.
“They will be deployed in
areas nearest them so that they may no longer spend for fares,” Rudio said adding
that the deployment will start mid-April until mid-September this year for the
first batch.
Next year, another batch of
nurses will be hired again by the province with a minimum pay of P5, 000
monthly.
Nurses are now the nation’s
second-largest group of professionals after teachers.
The Professional Regulation
Commission estimates that there are at least 300,000 unemployed nurses in the
country.
The country’s large
oversupply of nurses has contributed not only to unemployment among their ranks
but also to the downward pressure on their wages.
Under the Republic Act 9173
or the Nursing Law of 2002, the floor pay of public nurses is pegged at Salary
Grade 15 or a monthly rate of at least P22, 688. That pay grade though is
rarely followed by government hospitals because they simply do not have the
money. Even the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. is paying their nurses only
about P15, 000 monthly. Private sector nurses are just as underpaid.
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