Tagbilaran City

CEBU, Philippines - Representative Arthur Yap (3rd district, Bohol) filed a bill protecting registered nurses by prohibiting private and public hospitals from requiring the payment of fees or charges from these nurses to be able work in these institutions.

Yap said the bill was intended to correct the practice of obligating nurses to pay hospitals for what they termed as skills training or volunteer work for gaining experience and future employment. "The practice is like frying these nurses in their own fat," he said.

The bill was passed by the 15th Congress on third and final reading and was transmitted to the Senate for concurrence but, due to lack of material time, it was never acted upon by the Upper Chamber, said Yap.

Yap proposed that only those programs accredited by the Department of Health and the Professional Regulation Commission Board of Nursing shall be implemented and allowed to charge corresponding fees.

Once the bill is enacted, the proposed penalty for any violator is imprisonment of a minimum of six months or a maximum of one year plus a minimum fine of  P100,000 or a maximum of P500,000.

If the offender is an association, corporation or any other juridical person, the penalty shall be imposed upon the owner, president, hospital director and for any other person responsible of the violation.

Yap added a provision entailing a refund and entitlement to salary to be given to the nurse who shall be required by the hospital to pay for the training.

The hospital shall refund the full amount paid by the victim-nurses, plus interest of six percent per year, and that a salary equivalent to Salary Grade 11, pursuant to Executive Order 811 in 1989, shall be paid to the nurse for services rendered.

"The lack of appropriate employment opportunities for nurses in the country makes them susceptible to exploitation and that such unscrupulous practice of many hospitals is their policy of demanding payment of fees from nurses who seek to gain the necessary work experience required for work abroad," said Yap.

"There is now a notable decline in the demand for nurses, domestically and abroad, and more registered nurses, who have just graduated and hurdled the licensure examination, find themselves unemployed in a highly saturated labor market. Others, with a little luck, end up working in call centers or get employed as caregivers and nursing aides," said the congressman in the bill's explanatory note.

Yap further laid down in his bill "the types of training programs for nurses duly approved by government agencies which hospitals may legitimately collect charges from those who avail of these trainings." (FREEMAN)