400,000 nurses mean 400,000 votes in 2010!

By now you must have read about that piece of bad news that some 400,000 ready-to-work nurses are stuck in the Philippines because they can’t enter the United States… the place of choice by majority of these nurses. The general understanding in this country is that, education is the shortcut out of the vicious cycle of poverty. This is why economists here link our population growth to our being a Third World country. But in truth, it is the failed policies of our government that worsen our economic situation.

Every single year, the Department of Education (DepEd) always misses its targets in providing adequate school buildings, teachers or even books – becoming an annual excuse by DepEd officials blaming everything on the lack of money, despite the fact that all administrations since time immemorial have given education the top priority in the national budget. The result of this annual failure means that more and more Filipinos have to skip school, resulting in their being stuck in poverty.

So you can say that those who already graduated were the lucky ones right? Wrong! Not if you look at the 400,000 ready-to-work nurses who are stuck in limbo! We’re talking about people who already finished their nursing courses and took the necessary exams like the Commission Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) International English Language Testing System (IELTS) or National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).

My daughter Katrina took at least two of these examinations and she’s now just part of the statistics among the unemployed 400,000 nurses, thanks to the unexpected “retrogression” in the US that even the best recruiters cannot hurdle. Of course, my daughter can easily find work in any call center in Cebu, but that’s not good for her nursing career. But those who need to help their parents have no choice but to work in call centers.

So where do these nurses go from here? To make matters worse, because of the nursing glut, nurses cannot even find work in any hospital even if they would pay the hospital just so they could gain that minimum one-year experience. Yet by March another bunch of nurses is expected to graduate and add more to the current glut. Something drastic must be done and we expect our government to do what they can for these near-desperate nurses.

But what kind of help can they expect from our political leadership? The 2010 presidential elections are fast approaching and indeed, even before the starter’s gun has been fired, the so-called presidentiables are already pressing the flesh, making sure that they wouldn’t be forgotten come May 2010. Next week, Sen. Manny Villar will be holding a Manny Villar Golf Tournament as if that would endear him to the electorate. Yes, even the posters of Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Bayani Fernando has found their way along certain major streets in Cebu City.

All these presidentiables are presenting themselves to the Filipino people as the man or woman who would make the Philippines great again! Shades of President Ferdinand Marcos! But in the dark days of Martial Law, no one ever dared to ask Da Apo when was the Philippines ever great? This is why the Philippines can never attain greatness because our political leaders are running for their own selfish political ambitions, of course using the name of the poor people as their rallying or battle cry! But then, this is the folly of the Filipino… we never learn the lessons from our past mistakes and end up repeating them, year after year after year!

We call upon President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) to ask the United States government to remove the quotas for nurses so that Filipino nurses can go to the US, where there is still a great demand for them. But no, La Presidenta decided not to go to the US this time because of the problems in Mindanao. But whether she likes it or not, the Mindanao question can never be solved unless we shift to a federal system, but this is another issue which we’ve already written in previous columns. 

I’m sure that if PGMA made an appeal to President George W. Bush, it might work wonders and perhaps wipe away that so-called retrogression! Like it or not, 400,000 unemployed nurses of voting age are 400,000 direct votes. Add the votes of their parents and their siblings and we’re talking at least a million votes! So now let’s hear it from the presidentiables… what they can do to help these nurses find jobs in the US or at least find them a hospital that would take them in so they can get the minimum one-year experience in hospital work. If you guys can’t help these jobless nurses today, it brings to question how you can solve the problems of this country if and when you become President in 2010.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.