Faces of the Boom: Nurses from Philippines give boost to Oil Patch Health Care in North Dakota

MINOT, N.D. – Filipino nurse Lucy Meg Quinit thought she and her family would miss home more as they adjust to a new life in North Dakota. By: Amy Dalrymple, Forum News Service, INFORUM

• Lucy Meg Quinit

Lucy Meg Quinit, pictured Friday at Trinity Health in Minot, is one of a group of 86 nurses from the Philippines recruited to work in Minot. Amy Dalrymple / Forum News Service

MINOT, N.D. – Filipino nurse Lucy Meg Quinit thought she and her family would miss home more as they adjust to a new life in North Dakota.

But Quinit is among more than 80 nurses from the Philippines that Trinity Health in Minot has recently hired, and the new recruits have formed their own support community.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re not getting so homesick,” said Quinit, who has worked for Trinity Health for one year.

International recruitment is one way Trinity Health has responded to western North Dakota’s oil development, which has increased patient loads in Minot while making it more difficult to retain staff.
“The oil boom has really, really had a tremendous effect on health care in general,” said Barbara Brown, Trinity’s chief nursing officer.

Trinity Health, a regional trauma center with a service area of 20 counties, continues to hire nursing graduates from local colleges and universities, as well as around the country, and has no problem getting applicants, Brown said.

But the high cost of living in Minot makes it difficult to attract and retain staff, and many hires from elsewhere in the country choose to move closer to family after they gain experience, Brown said.

Trinity Health responded by developing a recruitment plan, which included traveling to the Philippines about two years ago and interviewing more than 150 nurses, Brown said. During that trip, they hired 86 Filipino nurses, and they continue to conduct interviews via Skype when they have a qualified applicant, she said.
For Quinit, a native of Cebu City, the opportunity to work in the U.S. was something she wanted for years so she could have access to better opportunities.

“Nurses there are really paid so low,” said Quinit, 42. Quinit moved to Minot about a year ago, and her husband, Dexter, and their sons Darren, 6, and David, 2, joined her after they completed the school year there and she had found an apartment.

Quinit works weekdays in Trinity’s podiatry clinic and her husband works nights and weekends for Trinity as a central processing technician, a schedule that allows one parent to always be with the boys.
In the winter, Darren has questioned why his mom would choose to move them to such a cold city, but he likes his school so much he wishes he could go to kindergarten on weekends.
“It wasn’t hard for him to adjust. He loved it right away,” Quinit said.

Most of the other Filipino nurses also have their families in Minot and they get together for birthday parties and holidays. They use technology to keep in touch with family back home.
“I still get to talk to them almost every day, if not every day,” Quinit said.
Trinity is now considering recruiting nurses from Canada as well, Brown said.
“I think we have to,” Brown said. “We have to continually look at all the different opportunities we might have because we’re not the only ones. Everyone’s struggling to make sure they have people.”

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Dalrymple is a Forum News Service reporter stationed in the Oil Patch.
She can be reached at adalrymple@forumcomm.com or (701) 580-6890.

Tags: north dakota, news, updates, health, oil

Source:  http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/427439/group/News/

Qatar to hire a million workers as it prepares for 2022 World Cup

February 20, 2014 9:06pm

 

At least one million jobs are up for grabs in Qatar as the sovereign Arab state starts its preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

A report on “24 Oras” on Thursday said Qatar has allotted an equivalent of P288 billion for projects like metro railways, airports, hotels and football stadiums.

The Philippine labor attaché in Qatar, however, clarified that the job offers are for all nationalities, the report said.

According to the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, there were 200,016 Filipinos in Qatar as of December 2012.

In November last year, the government of Qatar came under fire for the supposed sub-standard living conditions of its laborers. Amnesty International said migrant workers were "treated like cattle" and called on FIFA to ensure the proper enforcement of human rights laws.

In response, FIFA gave Qatar a two-week mandate in January to provide a report on the current condition of laborers.

On their deadline, Qatar presented a 50-page document that set measures on wages and workers' accommodations. Contractors who violate the stipulations will be penalized, though the issue of sponsorship was completely untouched.

Monthly audit reports will ensure that these standards are adhered to, rather than put up for show. — Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News

 

Source:  http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/349382/pinoyabroad/news/qatar-to-hire-a-million-workers-as-it-prepares-for-2022-world-cup

Gov't finalizing protocol to send OFW's to Iraq

ABS-CBNnews.com

Posted at 02/11/2014 6:39 PM | Updated as of 02/11/2014 6:39 PM

 

MANILA – Vice President Jejomar Binay expressed hopes that the Philippines and Iraq would soon sign a protocol that would pave the way for the deployment of Filipino workers to the Middle Eastern country.

Binay was referring to the protocol on the implementation of the Philippines-Iraq Agreement on the Mobilization of Manpower.

"The Department of Foreign Affairs is coordinating with the concerned government agencies to finalize the protocol," Binay said during Iraqi Ambassador Ahmed Kamal Hasan Alkamaly's courtesy call to the Vice President.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration lifted the 6-year deployment ban to Iraq in July 2013. The Philippine government had imposed the ban on the deployment of OFWs to Iraq in 2007 due to the US invasion of the country.

Binay said that labor experts estimate at least 10,000 Filipinos to be hired as a result of the lifting of the ban. Iraq previously was host to some 4,000 Filipinos.

Binay met with the Iraqi ambassador to talk about ways on strengthening bilateral relations.
Iraq, Binay said, is keen to attract Philippine companies to participate in the construction of housing units, roads, and other infrastructure that will be subsidized by the Iraqi government.
Binay said Iraq is also interested in forging a government-to-government arrangement for the recruitment of nurses to operate Iraq’s hospitals.

"We hope and pray that under his term (Iraqi Ambassador), there will be greater bilateral relations between Iraq and the Philippines," Binay said.

Source: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/02/11/14/govt-finalizing-protocol-send-ofws-iraq

Sexual Liberation Abroad/Domestic workers come out of the closet in Hongkong

By: Dennis Chong, Agence France-Presse
February 2, 2014 11:51 AM

                       Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong on their day-off. AFP FILE PHOTO

HONG KONG - Working long hours away from home for low pay and little time off, life is tough for foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, but for some the city has brought sexual liberation unheard of in their home countries.

To Jenny Patoc, a 41-year-old Filipina helper, Hong Kong is the place where she met her girlfriend 15 years ago and where they unofficially tied the knot at their own "holy union" ceremony last year -- despite the semi-autonomous territory's failure to recognize same sex marriages.
"In Hong Kong, we are free. We can show who we are," Patoc told AFP in the southern Chinese city's packed Central financial district on a recent Sunday, where thousands of helpers congregate every week on their one day off.

While conservative attitudes still prevail in aspects of Hong Kong society, for many migrant workers the former British colony is an easier place than home to be gay, particularly those from Muslim Indonesia and the deeply Catholic Philippines.

Roughly 300,000 domestic workers make about HK$4,000 ($515) a month as helpers for Hong Kong families, doing household chores and looking after children while the parents are out at work.
They are mainly from the Philippines, Indonesia, or Thailand, many supporting their families by sending earnings home.

Conditions can be tough. In a report last year Amnesty International condemned the "slavery-like" conditions faced by thousands of Indonesian women who work in Hong Kong as domestic staff, accusing authorities of inaction.

The findings came just weeks after a Hong Kong couple were jailed for a shocking string of attacks on their Indonesian housekeeper, including burning her with an iron and beating her with a bike chain.
Last month thousands of domestic workers took to the streets demanding justice for another Indonesian helper who claimed that she was left unable to walk after eight months of abuse at the hands of her employer who has subsequently been arrested.
And this week another Hong Kong housewife was arrested for allegedly assaulting her Bangladeshi maid.

"I wanted to be free"
For Marrz Balaoro, a member of local lesbian support group Filguys Association, coming out was much easier in Hong Kong compared to her home in the Philippines in the 1980s.
"I came to Hong Kong because I wanted to be on my own. I wanted to be free," Balaoro said.
"My first employer was considerate and she understood my situation."

After witnessing a lesbian being bullied by fellow Filipinas in Hong Kong, she formed the Filguys Association to help homosexual migrant workers from her country facing discrimination.
Filguys has 400 members and holds regular seminars across the city.

Balaoro said that her struggle to be understood in her home country began in childhood and continued through difficult teenage years.
She recalled how a doctor back home prescribed hormone injections at her parents' request, in the hope that they would make her look more feminine -- at the age of 12.
"The doctor asked me how I felt when I saw a handsome man," said the youthful-looking 56-year-old, who was born to a Catholic family in Abra Province of North Luzon.
"Without much thinking, I said I envied him and wanted to look like him. The doctor thought I was a hopeless case."

She added although the situation has generally improved in her home country, violence towars homosexuals in the Philippines is common, especially in rural areas.
"They think you don't have a direction in life, and you are treated as an outcast. It's very difficult," she said.

Struggle for privacy
Another hurdle for helpers is finding the space and privacy to express themselves when taking time off from jobs in which they are required by law to live with the families they work for -- sometimes in cramped, barely livable conditions.

"When you want to develop your own sexuality, you need private space. But the biggest problem for Hong Kong's overseas migrant workers is that their private space is very limited," said Lingnan University social scientist Yau Ching.

Patoc is fortunate enough to be able to rent a small apartment which she uses on Sundays to spend time with her partner. She also sublets part of it to other people looking for privacy.
"Every holiday we stay together and we will do the same. We love each other," the baseball cap-sporting Patoc said.

Amy Sim, an anthropologist with Hong Kong University, cited reports estimating that 40 percent of migrant workers in Hong Kong had engaged in homosexual relationships, driven by a mixture of loneliness, curiosity, and increased freedom to experiment.

"Isolation, loneliness all come together in migration. What they need is emotional comfort followed by physical comfort. You want to look for somebody who is similar and safe," she said.

Source:  http://www.interaksyon.com/article/79929/sexual-liberation-abroad--domestic-workers-come-out-of-the-closet-in-hong-kong