UK puts an end to the dream of aspiring Filipino nurses

United Kingdom, 24th February: The change in the rules by the UK has put a big question mark on the fate of thousands of Filipino nurses wanting to come to the UK to get jobs there.

The new UK immigration rules mean only a handful of nursing jobs will be available for those hailing from outside the Europe.

However, that is a contradiction of the promises made by Tony Blair in Brighton around a decade ago during a nursing conference when he promised to provide 20,000 additional nurses to the staff-crunched NHS.

With a scanty numbers of nurses available in the UK, the NHS started hiring international nurses in huge numbers, especially from the Philippines and India.

This ushered in a huge demand for nurses resulting in mushrooming of hundreds of nursing schools to cater to the demand of nurses in the UK. That was about ten years ago.

The picture is entirely different now in the UK although the number of candidates undergoing nursing training in the Philippines continues to be the same.

As per the estimates, around 100,000 Filipinos were enrolled in nursing training in the year 2010, while the number of Filipino nurses get jobs overseas is said to be just around 13,000.

This shows a lack of clarity among the innocent Filipinos regarding the opportunities of nursing jobs in the UK.

To make matters worse, the greedy recruitment agencies having UK advisers as its employees are taking advantage of this lack of knowledge and grabbing huge amount in lieu of false promises of nursing jobs in the UK.

The recent example of two UK nationals, Nicholas Vickers and Simon Paice, found guilty of duping 12 student nurses of around £24,000 on account of visa arrangement and fake job promises in UK care homes and households.

Currently facing detention in the Camp Crame in Quezon City, they have been running NSN Worldwide Advisers, an unlicensed recruitment firm in Makati, Manila.

Although, this recruitment firm has been closed down, but still, there are hundreds cheating Filipino nurses and cashing in on their false dreams to make it big in the UK.

Meanwhile, the vice-president of the Philippines, Jejomar Binay, who headed the NSN investigations, has warned all the unlicensed recruiters having intentions of cheating the overseas Filipino workers.