Brunei has sought the lifting of deployment caps for Filipino health-care workers (HCW).
According to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) the exemption was sought as the requirement for HCWs set to increase in the country.
Melissa C. Mendizabal, Labor Attaché of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (Polo) in Brunei Darussalam, said two hospitals in the Southeast Asian country are eyeing to hire 200 nurses and 30 doctors.
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The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) imposed a deployment cap for HCWs last January to ensure the country will have a sufficient workforce to deal with COVID-19. Last week the POEA clarified there were around 900 available slots from the 6,500 deployment cap for HCWs this year.
She said that employers prefer to hire Filipino HCWs. “The salary is comparable to the salary of nurses in Singapore. Nurses receive high take-home pay because of the free accommodation and transportation. If they render overtime work, they earn as much as 2,000 Brunei dollars per month,” Mendizabal said at a news conference.
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Brunei reiterated the request last July after its initial appeal for exemption in 2020 was not approved by the government. Currently, only the United Kingdom and HCWs covered under the government-to-government hiring arrangements are exempted from the deployment cap.
Besides the HCWs, Brunei employers want to hire Filipinos in the oil and gas related jobs; household service workers (HSW) as well as semi-skilled workers such as car technicians of high-end vehicles.
There are currently 20,000 OFWs in Brunei. (AW0
