OVER the weekend, it was announced that the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) has reimposed the ban on the deployment of health-care workers to jobs in other countries. The government had originally banned health-care workers from leaving the country last April, citing the shortage of manpower here to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The fact that they are health care workers is actually irrelevant because the same principle applies to any category of worker. The establishment of an export quantity cap - 5,000 units in the case of health care workers - implies that government planners have determined that is the actual surplus in a given year. In other words, the supply of health care workers in the Philippines, whether those are existing or new ones in the production pipeline (i.e.

Source: Manila Times June 07, 2021 16:18 UTC