The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration clarified that balik-manggagawa or overseas Filipino workers with existing contracts are not covered by the deployment ban on healthcare workers.
POEA Administrator Bernard Olalia made the clarification following the ban imposed by the government after reaching the annual 5,000 cap.
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In an advisory released last weekend, POEA said that it will not issue new OEC for Filipino health care workers for the time being.
“The cap of 5,000 was reached last June 1 based on the overseas employment certificate issued since January. Exempted from this are those with existing contracts,” Olalia said.
“Also exempted are those for deployment in the United Kingdom and those hired under government-to-government scheme because we have to fulfill the state obligation under such bilateral agreement. So they will be able to leave,” he added.
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Olalia said that they have already made recommendations to the IATF to increase the yearly cap on the deployment of healthcare workers.
“We want to be able to deploy more,” Olalia said. (TDT)
