By Ronron
September 30, 2007
Nursing students from a Quezon City-based college staged on Sunday a protest rally against the ratification of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) for fear that Filipino nurses will only end up as nursing aide or attendants in Japan.
At least 21 students of the Colegio de San Lorenzo said during their 30-minute rally in front of the Philippine Heart Center along East Avenue in Quezon City that Filipino nurses must be treated under the JPEPA as “professionals and not as commodities for sale.”
“Junk JPEPA! Junk! Junk! Junk!” the third-year nursing students, who were in their uniform, repeatedly shouted.
Noemelyn Pe, one of the demonstrators, said she will not consider working for 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 of the Japanese language, and will receive a much lower salary compared with Japanese nurses. “Isn’t that unfair?” she uttered.
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 undergo a six-month training 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 initial years of implementing the JPEPA, 400 Filipino nurses and 600 caregivers can 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 above 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, who was also in yesterday’s rally, 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 already made coordination with Senators Loren Legarda and Jamby Madrigal to help them address their concern in the ongoing scrutiny by the Senate of the proposed agreement.
She said that when the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will meet 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 grounds./DMS
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