Bad news disguised as ‘tunay na sahod’

Health secretary Enrique Ona recently announced the plan to hire next year half or 10,000 of the approximately 20,000 “nurse-trainees” under the Registered Nurses for Health Enhancement and Local Services (RN HEALS) program. They will be given “tunay na sahod” of P16,000 monthly, which is double what they receive (P8,000 a month) which, the secretary admitted,  is not salary “kundi parang allowances lamang.”

The Nagkakaisang mga NARS ng Bayan, a national association of community health nurses and advocates, views the health secretary’s announcement as an empty promise and a cheap ploy to mollify the thousands of disillusioned and demoralized RN HEALS nurses.

Under the RN HEALS program, the nurse-trainees are treated as second-class professionals: While performing regular functions, they don’t get any salary, a monthly allowance lower than the required minimum wage. And they are bound by a one-year nonrenewable contract that deprives them of job security, legal protection and basic employment benefits (like hazard pay and subsistence allowance). Even the planned P16,000 monthly salary is grossly below the P24,887 monthly starting salary explicitly set in the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002 for government nurses.

Some findings in a nationwide survey conducted in September 2012 and March 2013:

• RN HEALS “nurse-trainees” comprise almost a third of the nursing personnel at the grassroots level;

• Out of the 83 cities and municipalities the study covered, only three gave the (nonmandatory) P2,000 monthly additional subsidy;

• Out of 10 respondents, only four were regular employees; the other six were either contractual, casual, “job order,” volunteer, or trainees under RN Heals;

• Ninety percent of all respondents had a take-home pay averaging only P10,000 monthly.

• All local governments had a de-facto “freeze hiring”-of-nurses policy even though plantilla positions were vacant.  Instead, there was widespread contractual hiring, in forms like “job-order, work contracts.”

In view of the above, what could have been good news from the secretary was in fact a declaration green-lighting the institutionalization of the massive exploitation of nurses in the guise of “training and development.” This, on top of “labor contracting,” a mode of hiring which is an outright violation of the nurses’ fundamental right to job security and decent work.

As an alter-ego of President Aquino who continually calls us his “boss,” Secretary Ona must decisively and judiciously act on our legitimate demands for “just wage and decent work conditions.” For starters, facilitate the immediate implementation of the Nursing Law of 2002 that provides for a starting salary of roughly P25,000 monthly for government nurses; and grant all work benefits and privileges under the Magna Carta of Health Workers.

—ELEANOR NOLASCO, founding president
RN NARS ng Bayan, [email protected]