About 500 Indian doctors want to work in RP First posted 08:42pm (Mla time) Mar 22, 2006 Agence France-Presse
ABOUT 500 Indian doctors have applied to work in the Philippines to ease a chronic shortage but cannot be given jobs because the constitution forbids it, the health secretary said Wednesday.
Francisco Duque said the Indian doctors were awaiting Manila's approval to start work but a provision in the Constitution bars foreign doctors from working in government hospitals. "I have 500 applicants from India but I cannot hire them because our Constitution doesn't allow that," he said in a speech to a medical group.
He said the Indian doctors could otherwise have filled the vacant posts at various government hospitals due to the large number of Filipino medical professionals who seek work abroad.
Well, I have blogged a warning about this a few days ago, and let me quote it here again (actually just about 3-4 days ago) :
Brain drain..well you sure you want the millions of Pinoys to go home? Can we provide the jobs and the pay they want? My answer to this is, train our people. Drain of medical doctors? Setup regional medical schools, cheapen the education cost/tuition, and provide a massive numbers of scholarships. For every doctor that goes abroad, train/graduate two doctors. Guys, it’s a race against time; we should do it now, before it's too late. Because if not, while we export our doctors, we might import Indian or Bangladeshi doctors to treat our people – kayo, este tayo rin.
Now...our dear politicians....what are we waiting for? It's your jobs diba? Do you want more pork? Then do your job.