Senator Bong Go with President Rodrigo Duterte.
GIVING serious attention to the migration of tens of thousands of the country’s healthcare workers to find greener pastures through employment abroad, Senator Christopher Lawrence ‘Bong’ Go has vowed to continue pushing for measures and policies that will promote and protect their welfare and rights to stem the unabated exodus to other countries.
“Hindi pa po rito nagtatapos ang aking apela sa gobyerno na bigyan ng nararapat na suporta ang ating mga healthcare at non-healthcare workers. Sila ang dahilan kung bakit napakaganda ng ating Covid-19 response,” Go disclosed in a statement.
“Tayong mga public servants, tuloy lang dapat ang malasakit sa ating HCWs. Hindi natin makakaya ito kung wala sila. Walang tigil dapat ang serbisyo lalo na sa panahon ng krisis na ito,” he added.
Under the upcoming leadership of incoming Senate President Juan Miguel ‘Migs’ Zubiri, outgoing president Rodrigo Toa Duterte’s former special assistant will be continuing to head the Senate Committee on Health and Demography and as its chairman, he cited the importance of elevating the country’s status as a producer of leaders, experts and authorities in the field of medicine, particularly in the nursing profession.
In 2019, Go filed Senate Bill 395, also known as the ‘Advanced Nursing Education Act of 2019’, doe the purpose of amending the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002, which seeks to protect and improve the nursing profession by instituting measures that will result in relevant nursing education, humane working conditions, better career prospects and a dignified existence for our nurses.
“Naka-focus masyado ang ibang kasalukuyang programa sa pangingibang bansa ng mga nurses natin. Gusto kong maisama ang community integration and immersion sa kanilang mga curriculum upang mahikayat naman natin silang magtrabaho sa mga pamayanan dito sa Pilipinas,” the senator pointed out.
In the same year he filed SB 395, Go was also instrumental in the enactment of Republic Act No. 11466, or the ‘Salary Standardization Law 5’, which gives all civilian government employees, including nurses, increased salaries broken down in tranches even as he likewise ensured that enough funding was allotted for the implementation of the 2019 Supreme Court decision which upheld Section 32 of the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002 that sets the minimum salary grade of the Nurse I position at SG-15 with a corresponding salary of more than PhP35,000.
