Health Workers

240,000 gov't health workers said to face layoffs

Christian V. Esguerra
Inquirer News Service

SOME 240,000 government health workers are set to be laid off notwithstanding the unabated exodus of doctors and nurses to other countries and the slash in the budget of already cash-strapped state hospitals that has adversely affected the delivery of health services.

The Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD), a national organization of doctors, nurses and other health professionals, said the Department of Health is set to implement Executive Order No. 366 which would streamline the bureaucracy to save money.

Dr. Gene Nisperos, HEAD secretary general, said the layoffs would affect key government hospitals which already lack medical personnel as a result of budget problems.

The Philippine Orthopedic Center, for instance, should have 1,100 employees but is actually short by 99 people, he said.

The National Center for Mental Health and the San Lazaro Hospital, the government's primary treatment facility for victims of rabies, also lack medical personnel, he said.

The NCMH has only 1,570 employees while San Lazaro has 826 even if they should have 1,870 and 890 workers, respectively.

Another vital government hospital, the Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center in Manila, has a bed capacity of only 450 but admits around 600 patients daily, excluding 1,400 out-patient cases.

"What price is exacted from health personnel who are expected to provide quality health care?" Nisperos asked.

The Alliance of Health Workers on Friday predicted that the country's health care system would collapse in two to three years if doctors and nurses continued to leave for higher paying jobs abroad.

From 2000 to 2003 alone, the group said the country lost 51,850 nurses.

Some 5,000 registered doctors also left in the last four years while around 4,000 are now taking up nursing, according to the group.

Nisperos said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was not doing enough to address the serious problems besetting the health care system.

"She has remained blind to the deteriorating state of public hospitals and remained deaf to the pleas of health workers for just wages and better working conditions," he said.

Nisperos' group was dismayed after the Arroyo administration cut the budget of the Tondo Medical Center last year to only P20 million a month compared to nearly P28 million monthly in 2002.

Two Nannies

Commentary : The Filipina nannies as surrogate parents

Isabel Escoda
Inquirer News Service

IT'S not often that a Filipino nanny becomes like a mother and father to the foreign child she cares for. This happened recently to two Filipinas who worked for a wealthy American family in Hong Kong. When the father was murdered, his wife was accused of killing him. Soon after the murder of investment banker Robert Kissell in Nov. 2, 2003, his wife Nancy was taken into custody. The couple's three small children were then whisked away by relatives to the United States, along with their two nannies, Conchita and Maximina Macaraeg.

The incident highlighted the image of the Filipino nanny as a substitute parent to her charges. The sensational trial of this high-profile murder case recently ended in Hong Kong's Court of First Instance, with the jury unanimously declaring Nancy Kissell guilty of murder and the judge meting out a life sentence. Presented during the 67-day trial was overwhelming evidence that she had murdered her husband.

Robert Kissell was a top executive of the Merrill Lynch investment bank. He was an archetypically ambitious, hard-driving individual, whose marriage had been unraveling before his murder. He had told friends he planned to divorce his wife Nancy because of her affair with a man in the United States. In early 2003, during the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong, she fled with her children and a nanny to their home in Vermont. There she started an affair with a handyman hired to repair their TV set, something that continued by telephone after she returned to Hong Kong-their numerous extended calls were later traced by investigators.

The trial, which transfixed Hong Kong's expatriate community, saw Nancy admitting to killing her husband in self-defense, because he had repeatedly threatened and abused her. Accused during questioning of having drugged Robert before bludgeoning him, she would often lapse into amnesia.

It's presumed that Robert's parents will arrange for the future care of the Kissell children (two girls and a boy aged 9, 6 and 3 at the time of the murder) while custody is being discussed. And it seems natural that Conchita and Maximina would continue to be involved in their care.

During the trial, the two Filipinas were summoned back to Hong Kong to testify. With the help of an Ilocano interpreter, Conchita said she saw no signs of violence between the couple (a testimony which didn't support Nancy's claim of abuse), but she noted that the couple were having problems with the marriage because "there was no sweetness anymore" between them. She also reported that during their stay in Vermont, the handyman would go to the house in the evenings, supposedly to check the TV, and would spend the night-she revealed that one of the girls once woke her up at night, unable to find her mother.

The most damning part of Conchita's testimony was about Nancy telling her not to tidy up the master bedroom, which was kept locked for the next three days after Robert's "disappearance." Nancy apparently spent two nights with her husband's corpse, wrapping it in a carpet and removing traces of blood from the room, after which she called for workmen to move the tied rolled-up carpet to an outside storeroom.

The Kissells were a wealthy Jewish couple, and Robert's job earned him top wages at his bank, which entitled them to live in one of Hong Kong's most luxurious complexes. His shocked Merrill Lynch colleagues declared he was a devoted father, while Nancy's friends said she was equally devoted to her kids-though one revealed that she was a spendthrift and had once paid HK$5,000 to have her hair styled.

Hong Kong newspapers kept the public riveted on the steamy murder saga as the trial unfolded with testimonies and evidence. One of the Kissells' neighbors mentioned having taken his daughter, on the day of the murder, to play with the Kissell girls. He was given a milkshake by Nancy, who had also made one for Robert. He said the drink tasted strange and caused him to pass out briefly by the time he returned home.

The prosecution painstakingly marshaled the evidence, showing how Nancy had laced the milkshakes with drugs; after he passed out in their bedroom, she bludgeoned Robert to death with a metal heirloom. She later claimed she had used it in self-defense because he had tried to rape her and then attack her with a baseball bat-a piece of evidence presumed to have been planted by her later in the bedroom.

During her grilling, Nancy claimed she was often sodomized by Robert. She made a point of going to the doctor some days before the murder, and went to the police on the day of the murder to claim she had been beaten up by her husband who, she said, had disappeared. Her lawyer's defense did not sway the jury.

After the trial, the dead banker's father said his younger granddaughter read the news of the murder on the Internet and told him, "Mommy killed Daddy. I don't want to see her again." Soon after the murder, he said he cried with his eldest granddaughter, then 9, after he informed her that her "Daddy had died" after her parents had had a fight.

The Kissell kids are now in the temporary care of the estranged wife of Robert's brother in Connecticut, who is himself in jail, having been charged with embezzlement. The fact that Conchita and Maximina are the kids' link to their past life in Hong Kong is obvious. They probably have children of their own in the Philippines (Maximina is Conchita's sister-in-law), but they may henceforth be fully engaged in the crucial care of their charges, helping them survive and minimize their trauma. It's a burden the two Filipinas will surely bear with much love.

Isabel T. Escoda has written about Filipinos in Hong Kong in her books, "Letters from Hong Kong," "Hong Kong Postscript" and "Pinoy Abroad," her latest.

Brunei's Job-Seekers

Brunei Remains ‘Promised Land’ For Job-Seekers In Philippines By Rosli Abidin Yahya
Bandar Seri Begawan - The Sultanate continues to be - for some Filipino jobseekers - the promise land of gold, after one illegal recruiter was arrested by police in Zamboanga after she was allegedly found to have taken hefty processing fees from six victims with promised jobs of salesladies in Brunei Darussalam - but left them stranded in Zamboanga instead.
The victims arrived in Zamboanga, southern Philippines, from Isabella and Manila, supposedly to continue their journey onward to Brunei. However, they were left stranded by the recruiter, MindaNews reported.
The police arrested the alleged illegal recruiter last Wednesday after complaints were brought against her by two of her victims from General Santos City, Mindanao.
The two told the police that they were recruited last February in General Santos City and were abandoned by the suspect upon arrival in Zamboanga. The victims said the suspect "recruited" them to work as salesladies in Brunei and asked the victims to pay a fee of P20,000 (B$625) each.
Recently nine Filipinos returned home after they were abandoned by their recruiters in Brunei who collected hefty processing fees from them with promised of jobs. -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

Macau's Fake Jobs

Filipinos warned against seeking jobs in Macau

Inquirer News Service

LABOR Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas warned Filipinos planning to go to Macau as tourists with the intention of looking for jobs not to be enticed by disreputable recruiters or agencies. They could end up as sex workers, she said.

Sto. Tomas cited a report by Macau-based labor attaché Carlos Sta. Ana, who said more Filipinos were arriving there as tourists and were finding it difficult to find jobs in the Chinese peninsula.

According to Sta. Ana's report, tourists are allowed to stay in Macau for 30 days. During this time, they become vulnerable to people offering to look for jobs for them in exchange for money. But the jobs seldom materialize.

Sta. Ana said those who run out of money are forced to sell their passports and unused return tickets to overstaying Filipinos.

Some resort to theft or the sex trade, while others go to mainland China to get a 37-day visa extension and look for jobs there, he said.

Sto. Tomas explained that despite the booming economy of Macau, Filipinos would have a hard time finding jobs there because the Chinese prefer to hire workers from the mainland.

"It is very risky for tourists to look for employment in Macau since they can easily be eased out by mainlanders," she said in a statement.

Filipinos who want to work in Macau should also verify the existence of the job offers with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, she said.

Macau is a former Portuguese colony that became the Macau Special Administrative Region of China in 1999. China's socialist economic system is not practiced there, but the "one country, two systems" policy is observed. It is an open economy and is enjoying rapid growth with the expansion of its tourism industry.

Labor Dispute

At Large : The ISM dispute

Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer News Service

BY TODAY, we should know if the scheduled auction of the International School of Manila (ISM) has transpired and who the buyers, if any, are. The auction was ordered by the Department of Labor and Employment in fulfillment of a "Writ of Execution" in response to a ruling by the Supreme Court granting the demand of Filipino teachers in the school for payment of back wages and retirement pay adjustments in the wake of a judgment that Filipino or Philippine-based teachers were entitled to "parity" in wages as their colleagues who were hired abroad.

I'd written on this issue some months ago, and before I write anything else about the dispute between the teachers' union and the school administration, I'd like to address, however belatedly, an allegation raised in the wake of that column.

Shortly after the column came out, the ISM Board of Trustees published an open letter, in the form of a full-page advertisement in this paper, responding to and contradicting some of the contents of the columns of this writer and of former Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz. I won't go into the alleged "mish-mash of half-truths and false assertions" that my esteemed colleague and I are supposed to have peddled. Let me go directly instead to a statement at the end of that "open letter" that I feel needs some response, even if months late.

In the last paragraph of that "open letter," the ISM Board of Trustees accused the ISAE, the teachers' union, of "waging a media storm, with the help -- paid or unpaid -- of its contacts and connections."

* * *

I WAS abroad at the time the ad came out, and though friends told me that I had been mentioned, no one saw fit to show me the ad itself (to be fair, I wasn't all that curious, either) or to point out the sly insinuation at the end. In fact, upon my return to the country, when I agreed to meet with ISM superintendent David Toze and the ISM board president, lawyer Chuck Medel, in the home of a mutual friend, who's an ISM parent, no one among them sought to clarify whether I was "paid or unpaid" by the ISAE teachers, even after I told them that while I'd heard about the ad, I hadn't seen it yet.

Well, for the record, let me state here that ISAE president Raquel David Ching, who's no relation, as well as the ISAE did not and have not paid me for meeting with them or writing about their case against ISM. For the record, let me state here that all the "payment" I got was an excellent dinner at the Embassy Restaurant and then again just last week at Le Soufflé, both at the Fort. Oh, and I might add that ISAE member Neni Sta. Romana Cruz also threw in a free copy of her new book on Filipino names.

You might say this accounting proves I'm either an honest journalist or a very cheap buy, but I assure you, I don't need to even be fed to write about issues I really care about. Messrs. Toze and Medel would know that to be true, since they didn't have to pay me either, or even spring for the cake that my friend served the afternoon we met.

* * *

A TWO-PART series in the business section on the planned auction of ISM had for the headline of the second installment that the school "only had itself to blame."

I'm inclined to agree with this assessment. After all, if the ISM board had only obeyed the ruling of the Supreme Court in June 2000 granting equal pay to Philippines-hired teachers and resolving the 1995 CBA deadlock they would not now be facing an enormous cash obligation.

While Filipino and other locally hired teachers indeed began to enjoy "pay parity" with the foreign hires, the ISM persisted in questioning the ISAE's position that the decision was retroactive to 1995, when the case was filed.

Indeed, in my talk with Toze and Medel and in their full-page open letter, the ISM authorities persisted in painting the teachers' actions as selfish and greedy, to a point that they would even endanger the existence of the school.

Ching poo-poohs the cries of distress of ISM, cries that the foreign business chambers have apparently swallowed hook, line and press release. "They need to prove that they are in financial distress first," Ching says of the school's protestations that it could not possibly meet its obligations to the teachers' union without putting their continued existence at risk.

In a position paper, Ching asserts that "with an average annual enrollment of 1,800 students at $10,000 per child, the School generates an average annual revenue of about $18 million. The School will not find difficulty in complying with the award which it has successfully stalled for the past five years."

Indeed, the "auction" of the school grounds and property were ordered by labor department only after years of failed negotiations and ISM's staunch position that the Supreme Court's ruling on retroactivity was "wrong."

* * *

AT THE TIME we talked, Ching said they were in talks with the ISM board, with labor department representatives as mediators. Saying they are perfectly willing to negotiate the terms of payment, she stressed though that "we cannot negotiate something without honor ... The School must respect the Department of Labor and Employment's Writ of Execution."

While they might be willing to negotiate a schedule of payments and installments, "it has to be within a reasonable time frame," Ching adds.