Healthcare regulating bodies in United Arab Emirates
(UAE) have unified their licenses, making it possible for doctors,
nurses and health professionals to practice anywhere in the Emirates.
The Ministry of Health (MoH),
Dubai Health Authority (DHA) and Health Authority of Abu Dhabi (HAAD)
signed an agreement on Wednesday for the unification of licenses for
medical practitioners in the country.
Medical practitioners in the country were waiting for this
unification process for some time as this will enhance their employment
chances.
“It’s a new step on the right path in order to unify the regulations,
laws and procedures governing this noble human profession,” said Dubai
Ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum about the agreement that was
signed on the sidelines of Arab Health Exhibition & Congress.
According to the ministry sources, the law would standardize several aspects of medical services in private and public sectors. The law would also ensure there was a single format for hiring, and salaries for each job.
“This is a good step and now a plenty of medical professionals
will be available in the market as they can practice in any emirate
with any of MoH/DHA/HAAD licenses,” investors told Arab News.
Sheikh Mohammed described Health Exhibition & Congress as an
excellent scientific medical demonstration, considering the scientific
level of both participants and visitors, saying that the exhibition was a
platform to exchange views, ideas, experiences and scientific studies that contribute to the development of health care.
Sheikh Mohammed stressed that the UAE will always remain an oasis of cultural harmony and human generosity.
Surely, this will be a good news to Filipino nurses and other health professionals applying in the Emirates. Source: http://nurseupdates.com/uae-unifies-moh-dha-haad-licenses/
Posted at 01/22/2014 7:46 PM | Updated as of 01/22/2014 7:46 PM
MANILA -- A total of 4,167 overseas Filipino workers from
Jeddah in Saudi Arabia have been brought home by the Department of
Foreign Affairs. (DFA) through the Philippine Consulate General.
According to the DFA, more than 2,000 of the repatriates were women
who ran away from their employers, and close to 900 were undocumented
Filipino children.
The list did not include those who left the kingdom without informing
the consulate, the DFA said in a press statement Wednesday.
The DFA shouldered the airline tickets of 2,997 of the repatriates, costing P56 million.
The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and the host government provided 194 and 976 tickets, respectively.
Exit visas were processed and issued by the Saudi government through
the facilitation of the Consulate and the Philippine Overseas Labor
Office.The repatriated Filipinos are among the more than 28,000 who went to
the consulate from April to December to seek either repatriation or
transfer to legal sponsors.
The kingdom has intensified its "Saudization" campaign by going after
illegal migrant workers, which led to 1,500 displaced OFWs setting up a
"tent city" outside the consulate.
In May, the Saudi government declared a grace period for the
correction of migrant workers' legal status, which was extended until
November. Most of the migrant Filipinos have successfully legalized their work status or have been repatriated, the DFA said.
News Release
Department of Labor and Employment
17 January 2014
POEA speeds up processing through Balik-Manggagawa on-line; over 500-K OFWs to benefit
Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz yesterday
expressed optimism that the usual long queue of overseas Filipino
workers (OFWs) at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration
(POEA) counters waiting for the processing of their overseas employment
certificates will soon be a thing of the past.
Baldoz, citing a report from POEA Administrator Hans Leo J. Cacdac, said
the Balik Manggagawa (BM) on-line is expected to make transactions more
convenient for vacationing OFWs who are returning to the same
employers.
With an operational BM online, OFWs returning to the same employer can
log on to the POEA website where they can fill out forms and submit the
document for processing. If the name of the employer indicated in the
form matches the name of the employer in the POEA database, the system
will readily approve the returning OFW’s “new record”.
“The balik manggagawa needs only to proceed to pay the fees
electronically and print out the OEC either at the comfort of their
homes or wherever they are conducting the on-line transaction,” Baldoz
explained.
The OEC print-out containing a special bar code will be presented to the
immigration officer at the airport upon departure. As soon as the
immigration officer opens the POEA database and finds the
balik-manggagawa’s “new record”, the OFW will be cleared for exit.
According to Cacdac, around 70 percent, or approximately 500,000
returning OFWs are expected to benefit from the BM on-line initiative.
Baldoz said the appointment system (personal processing at the POEA Central Office) will only apply to the following:
• Returning OFWs who are changing employers (match could not be found in the POEA database)
• OFWs who have not passed through POEA (e.g. visit visa holders or ASEAN tourists)
• Household service workers
“However,” she added, “OFWs still have the option of not going through
the appointment system at the POEA Central Office and instead secure
their OECs from our Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLOs) or POEA
regional and satellite offices.”
“The BM on-line system not only speeds up the process of securing OECs,
but more significantly, it provides convenience to our vacationing OFWs.
Very soon, our workers will be able to accomplish this transaction
from any location where there is online connection,” the labor and
employment chief said.
“This will also provide timely updating of the OFW and employer database of POEA,” she added.
Erwiana
Sulistyaningsih is being tended to at a hospital in Sragen, Indonesia,
on Jan. 15, 2014. Unable to walk after months of being physically abused
by her employers in Hong Kong, the 23-year-old returned to Indonesia
five days earlier with the help of a fellow domestic worker
When Indonesian domestic worker Erwiana Sulistyaningsih departed from Hong Kong
last Friday, she left a nightmare behind her. Eight months of alleged
beatings by her employer had disfigured the 23-year-old so badly she was
barely recognizable. A gaunt, pockmarked face with chipped teeth had
replaced her once smooth, girlish features. Her feet, scalded with hot
water, were black in color and had open sores.
Her case is another damning instance of the abuses faced by foreign
domestic workers in Hong Kong. Foreign maids have been a ubiquitous
feature of Hong Kong life since the 1970s, when the city’s economy began
to boom. Local women entered the labor force on a large scale and hired
domestic workers from the Philippines, and subsequently Indonesia and Thailand, to keep households running.
After decades of toiling away in the anonymous
confines of Hong Kong’s high-rise homes, domestic helpers, now
numbering around 300,000, are making their voices heard more
effectively, campaigning for better working conditions, higher wages and
entitlement to permanent residency.
True, legal protections are better in Hong Kong than in the Middle
East and other East Asian countries that are large markets for foreign
domestic workers, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
Malaysia and Singapore. But helpers in Hong Kong are nonetheless
vulnerable and often defenseless once disaster strikes. A 2012 Mission
for Migrant Workers survey found that 18% of migrant domestic workers in
the city had been physically abused. The Indonesian maid Kartika
Puspitasari became a cause célèbre last summer, when her two-year-long
torture in the hands of a sadistic couple was made public. The
revelation of Erwiana’s ordeal throws an uncomfortable spotlight on the
treatment of domestic workers yet again.
Unable to walk when she arrived home, Erwiana needed the help of a
fellow domestic worker she met at Hong Kong International Airport. Five
days after arrival, she is still in hospital, but her uncle Shomat tells
TIME she is doing better. “We were shocked, and we feel pained seeing
her in this condition,” he says.
If she is lucky, Erwiana will get justice. Her family says they are
determined to seek legal action against her former employer, and the
Indonesian government has pledged to provide a lawyer for her. Other
Indonesians, however, may never get redress. In a November report,
Amnesty International singled out Indonesians as particularly vulnerable
in Hong Kong. Unlike Filipinas, the other major group of domestic
helpers in Hong Kong, Indonesians are required to find employment
through recruitment agencies. These agencies are supposed to provide
them with training, set up their contracts and arrange their visas.
However, Amnesty found that the agencies failed to adequately represent
the interests of women on their books.
Ina, an Indonesian helper who prefers to be known by her first name,
was brusquely awakened and thrown out of her employer’s house one night.
“I spent the night crying in the lobby,” she says. “I was so
surprised.”
Before she left, she was made to sign a document, which she didn’t
understand. In the morning, she went to the only place she could think
of, the agency that had recruited her, and they explained to her that
she had just waived her right to outstanding salary and airfare home.
But instead of giving her legal advice on how to bring her employer to
court, agency staff merely scolded her and reminded her that she still
owed them money.
“From the moment the women are tricked into signing up for work in
Hong Kong, they are trapped in a cycle of exploitation with cases that
amounts to modern-day slavery,” says the author of the Amnesty report,
Norma Kang Muico.
Debt is the main tool agencies use to keep a grip on their workers.
Women are charged vastly inflated sums — which could reach about $2,700
or five times the minimum monthly wage, above the maximum legal limits
set by Hong Kong and Jakarta — for training and other “services,” with
their salaries deducted until the fees are repaid. Responding to the
increasing number of cases of abuse, the Indonesian government — only
too aware of the value to the economy of the remittances made by
overseas workers — has come up with a plan to export skilled laborers
such as cooks, housekeepers, nannies or caregivers from 2017 on,
reasoning that such professionals will be less vulnerable to
exploitation than the unskilled women now making up much of the
domestic-worker corps.
However, Eni Lestari, chairperson of the Hong Kong–based
International Migrants Alliance, says that this is unlikely to bring
about change, since agencies will still be in charge of the new training
programs. “The government wants to export migrant workers, but they
don’t want to do it on their own, so they outsource it to another
party,” she says.
To ensure their repayments, the agencies typically insist that
employees withstand difficult circumstances. This happened to both Ina
and Erwiana, who made distressed calls regarding their abuse. Even if
the contract is for some reason terminated, it is still a win-win
situation for the agency. Since Hong Kong law only permits domestic
workers to stay without employment for two weeks, the women are forced
back to the agencies to get a new contract.
Several U.N. committees — including the U.N. Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women and the U.N. Human Rights Committee — have
urged Hong Kong to review or repeal this two-week restriction, as well
as the law requiring domestic workers to live with their employers,
which is seen as putting the women at risk of sexual, physical and
emotional abuse. But the Hong Kong government claims that it is
protecting its own constituency — local employers. It says that
opportunistic maids leave employers they are not satisfied with,
saddling them with the headache of finding a new maid as well as the
additional fee that every new contract incurs.
At Bethune House, an organization in Hong Kong that provides shelter
and legal services to domestic workers in distress, project coordinator
Esther Bangcawayan receives new women, and hears more stories of abuse,
almost every day.
“There is a sense here [among employers] that ‘I brought my house
worker here, I want to maximize her,’” says Bangcawayan. “People need to
realize that people are people, not commodities.”
POEA reminds recruiters, OFWs on rules for placement fees
January 13, 2014 8:38pm
No placement fees for overseas Filipino worker (OFW) hired as domestic
workers, caregivers and seafarers, and no placement fees for OFWs
heading for five countries.
This was the reminder of the
Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) on Sunday, as it
reiterated its warning against recruiters violating the placement fee
rules.
More
jobs are available for Filipinos for 2014, and they can apply in the
online portal www.phil-job.net that fast-tracks jobseekers’ search for
jobs and employer’s search for manpower. The Department of Labor and
Employment (DOLE), which maintains the portal, said the number of posted
vacancies reached 1,384,728, up by 21%, as end December, 2013.
DOLE attributed the increase to t he growing number of private
employers – 7,443 in 2013 – who post job openings. The largest number of
job vacancies in 2013 was posted in the graduation months of April with
158,518 and March with 158,272. The use of phil-job.net is one of four
government convergent programs to address jobs and skills mismatch; the
others are adoption of Philippine Qualifications Framework, K-12
educational reform, and career guidance advocacy program.
DOLE also urged young Filipinos to apply for 47,000 jobs open for
seafarers and for openings in 15 international cruise ships that will be
in operation this year. Cruise ships hire people with work experience
in hotels, casinos and spas, health and wellness, information and
technology. Cruise vacations are getting popular, so global demand is
expected to increase in the next five years, it said.
The labor market study “Project JobsFit: DOLE 2020 Vision” has
identified 13 Key Employment Generators in the Philippines today:
Agribusiness; construction; information technology/business process
management; health and wellness; hotel, restaurant, and tourism;
wholesale and retail trade; banking and finance; mining; transport and
logistics; manufacturing; ownership, dwellings, and real estate;
education; and power and utilities. There are 237 in-demand occupations,
of which 11 appear in more than one industry: Accountant, appraiser,
cashier, checker, driver, machine operator, mechanical technician,
security guard, teller, and welder.
check this link: http://www.mb.com.ph/editorial-jobs-for-filipinos-for-2014/
The Manila Bulletin, led by its Chairman of the Board of Directors
Dr. Emilio T. Yap, President and Publisher Atty. Hermogenes P. Pobre,
Executive Vice President Dr. Emilio C. Yap III, Editor-in-Chief Dr. Cris
J. Icban Jr., Business Editor Loreto D. Cabañes, Officers and
Employees, Congratulate the Department of Labor and Employment headed by
Secretary Rosalinda D. Baldoz, Bureau of Local Employment Director
Dominique R. Tutay, Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics Director
Ma. Teresa V. Peralta, Bureau of Labor Relations Director Romeo M.
Montefalco Jr., and Bureau of Working Conditions Director Catherine L.
Parado, in their joint undertakings in assisting jobseekers find their
job match as well as cultivate their skills for gainful employment in
our Republic of the Philippines. CONGRATULATIONS AND MABUHAY!
MANILA – It took several years of working different jobs here
and abroad, before a young man finally managed to achieve his financial
goals.
Floi Wycoco said he ended up in sales after college but was still unsure if it was really meant for him.
"Still I don't know if it's for me. I try to look for different jobs,
different opportunities. In fact, when I was here, before I left for
overseas, for the first six years I had six different jobs. I was
bankrupt for the first six years because I was enjoying too much. I work
hard but I party harder mentality. That's the reason why I forgot to
save to the point that I had to go overseas," Wycoco said in a segment
aired on ANC's On The Money.
The son of an OFW who had worked in the Middle East for almost three
decades eventually landed with a sales job with a mobile company in
Singapore. He returned to thw Philippines only after two years of
working abroad.
"I have five kids so yung schooling nila lagi yun ang priority. Then
nung siya ay nag abroad, naisip ko na tutulad din siya sa kanyang papa
na ganun din katagal mag abroad. Yung salary niya sa abroad siguro mga
four times bigger," said his mother Majel Wycoco.
Wycoco indeed made more money from his overseas job. On his first pay check, Wycoco bought a watch worth P70,000."I don't know why. I just feel like this time it's mine," he said.
While abroad, Wycoco said he also experienced being bullied.
"I was also humiliated when I was overseas. We cannot deny the fact
that there is racism. It's still part of the society. When I had my job
overseas most of my colleagues bullied me and it came to a point when I
want to release that stress so I overspend my salary," he said.
His change of heart came when a friend introduced him to investing.
"A friend invited me to a financial seminar then that's it. They told
me how things work, how to value your money, how to make your money
grow. That day itself, I told myself 'Yes, this is for me. This is the
one that I need'," he said.
From that day on, Wycoco managed his finances well, allotting at
least 40 percent of his salary to savings and investment while the rest
is used to pay for his utilities, food.
"The last should be for the happy fund," he said.
Wycoco made sure to prioritize the basics like paying off his debt,
getting insurance, having an emergency fund and then investing in mutual
funds. He also set aside money to invest in the stock market.
"When I had my stock market account it was also rewarding but I can't
deny the fact that I became emotional when every time I see my
portfolio goes down. I just had to figure out 'No, I'm doing this not
for one to two years. I have to do this for more than 10 years," he
said.
While managing his personal finances, Wycoco also decided to help out others. He founded the Global Filipino Investors Group.
"Most of us are living beyond our means. No matter how big we get,
we'll lose it in just a span of days if we don't know how to manage it
well," he said.
The group gives online support to members and organizes seminars for them to attend.
He is also teaching his family how to save and invest.
"I want to contribute something, something good to help my nation
have a better life. The way we see it, a lot of us are still suffering
from poverty. We want to have a more financially educated next
generation," he said.
-- With a report from Melissa Gecolea, ANC On The Money
Here's the link: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/01/12/14/how-bankrupt-ofw-finally-achieved-financial-goals
Growth is the energy of life. I would like to invite the light of growth into our life in simple ways. Small changes add up to big ones, and
every positive step you take for yourself can advance you on your path
to a healthy, balanced, beautiful life.
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