Senate Approves Pay Hike For Gov’t Nurses
SENATE APPROVES PAY HIKE – The Senate has approved the pay increase for government nurses under the Department of Health.
We could recall that the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has said that there aren’t enough nurses in the Philippines. The average nurse to patient ratio should be 1:10.
However, this is not the case for most hospitals in the country. This led to nurses nationwide calling for a pay hike.
There are a lot of nurses that opt to go abroad because of the pay issue. The majority of nurses argue that the budget the government gives for nurses is simply not enough.
During an interview with ABS-CBN, Jennifer, a Nurse 1 in a public hospital in Quezon city said that she takes care of 80 patients. This is so much more than the recommended patient to nurse ratio.
She said she works almost 14 hours per day, however, she only gets paid P21,000 per month. This made her want to go abroad instead.
Luckily, the Senate had recently approved the P4.1 trillion 2020 national budget. Included in this is the P3 billion budget for the pay increase of Nurse 1 and 2 in public hospitals under the DOH.
This would be taken from the miscellaneous personnel benefits fund. Last October, the Supreme Court stated that the entry-level salary for nurses should not go under salary grade 15 which is P30,000.
Right now, it is on salary grade 11, which is about P20,000. This is under the Philippines’ nursing act of 2002.
With this, health workers and nursing groups were thankful for this development. They cited that there are a lot of nurses who want to stay but because of the poor salary are forced to leave.
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