Nurses pray for Senate rejection of RP-Japan pact
GMANews | 24 October 2007
Nurses pray for Senate rejection of RP-Japan pact
Fidel Jimenez, GMANews.TV
Filipino nurses holding a convention in Cagayan de Oro lighted candles and prayed on Wednesday for the enlightenment of senators to reject the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement.
Some 2,000 delegates to the 50th national convention of the Philippine Nurses Association at Lim Ket Kay Convention Center joined the symbolic ceremony.
Leah Paquiz, PNA president, led the prayer that asked for guidance for the senators to heed the opposition to JPEPA which has been perceived as an instrument that would expose Filipino nurses to abuse and exploitation in Japan.
“We prayed for the senators to pay attention to the fundamental shortcomings of the bilateral preferential trade agreement in protecting the dignity and welfare of Filipino nurses and caregivers," Paquiz said.
In a recent Senate hearing on the agreement, the nurses pointed out that because of the mandatory "on-the-job training" in Japan, a qualified Filipino nurse will effectively be a trainee under the supervision of a Japanese nurse, offering cheap labor with no worker rights’ protection, for up to three years or until she passes the licensure exam in Nihongo.
The group said the arrangement gives no job security for Filipino nurses and will integrate them into the trainee system of Japan, where non-Japanese nationals do the same work as Japanese nationals but are paid considerably less.
"The stringent language requirements of the JPEPA, although not bad per se, will however conspire so that the Filipino nurse will never gain the status of a Japanese nurse and will be forever relegated to an inferior trainee status with lesser pay simply because she hasn’t mastered Nihongo as well as a Japanese national born to the language," Paquiz said.
The nurses also noted in their prayer that during the five hearings conducted by the Senate committee on foreign relations chaired by Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, the universal agreement was that the panel supporting the JPEPA miserably failed to convince the senators to ratify the agreement, even turning previous supportive senators into skeptics with regard to the actual benefits of the agreement.
The Senate is expected to vote either to reject or approve the agreement when Congress resumes session on November 5.
“We hoped that the senators would stand their ground in asserting the rule of law, the sacredness of our people’s sovereignty and the primacy of human dignity, especially that of the Filipino nurses and caregivers," Paquiz said.
In previous interview, Ellene Sana, executive director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), said the agreement is a bad deal for Filipino health workers, specifically under Chapter 9 pertaining to the movement of nurses and care workers.
She said to become a caregiver in Japan, the applicant must be a college degree holder which is contrary to the requirements to the Japanese that even elementary school graduates can become caregivers.
“JPEPA requirements are unrealistic and are quite difficult to comply with. Aside from a diploma in a four-year course in college, the applicant must have a formal (Japanese) language course for six months and training for three years," Sana explained.
Sana added that although there are about 545,000 Japanese caregivers, only 60 percent practice their profession because the job is stressful and very tiring, and they consider the salary as very low.
Sana said 16.2 percent of caregivers in Japan got infected with patients’ diseases in the last two to three years.
“There is no shortage of caregivers in Japan. Japanese caregivers opted not to practice their profession because of the risk, work load and low pay. A caregiver has to work night shifts four times a month on the average of 15 hours per shift," according to Sana.
