Filipino nursing students want JPEPA junked
Manila Shimbun | 1 October 2007
Filipino nursing students want JPEPA junked
Ronito Calunsod/DMS
MANILA — Nursing students from a Quezon City-based college staged on Sunday a rally against the ratification of the proposed Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) for fear that Filipino nurses will only end up as nursing aides or attendants in Japan.
At least 21 students of the Colegio de San Lorenzo held the protest for 30 minutes in front of the Philippine Heart Center along East Avenue in Quezon City.
“Junk JPEPA! Junk! Junk! Junk!” the third-year nursing students, who were in their uniform, repeatedly shouted, demanding that Filipino nurses must be treated under the JPEPA as “professionals and not as commodities for sale.”
Noemelyn Pe, one of the protesters, said she will not consider working in Japan after graduation unless there is an assurance in the JPEPA that Filipino nurses will be treated fairly with Japanese nurses.
She said that as far as she knows, Filipino nurses who wish to work in Japan must undergo and complete a six-month training in the Japanese language, and will receive a much lower salary compared with Japanese nurses. “Isn’t that unfair?” she asked.
Her classmate, Tudor Miguel Enriquez, said he would rather work in European countries than waste time and effort in Japan.
“It’s really a waste of time because you already know what to do yet you have to re-think in Japanese to apply all your knowledge before you can get the regular benefits of a registered nurse there,” Enriquez said.
Under the proposed pact, Filipino nurses and caregivers who wish to work in Japan after the effectivity of the JPEPA are required to attend classes for six months to master the Japanese language. They are also required to take and pass the nursing licensure exam there in Nippongo before they can practice as regular nurses.
In the first two years of the proposed pact, 400 Filipino nurses and 600 caregivers will be allowed to enter the Japanese health care system.
Elsie de Veyra, a retired nurse associated with the Philippine Nurses Association and the anti-JPEPA group EcoWaste Coalition, viewed the conditions as “relegation of our professional nurses into nursing aides under the trainee system, depriving our nurses of their labor rights and making them predisposed to abuse and exploitation in a foreign land.”
Asked what will make the JPEPA acceptable to them, de Veyra said: “It should state that upon entry of a Filipino nurse there, he or she is no longer a trainee but a regular nurse.”
De Veyra said they have asked the help of Senators Loren Legarda and Jamby Madrigal so their concerns will be taken up during the ongoing hearings by the Senate on JPEPA.
She said that when the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations meets on October 4 to discuss the provision on the movement of natural persons, including caregivers and nurses, the group will also hold a rally at the Senate.
