Ilonggo Senator Franklin Drilon decried the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DOLE) offer to send more Filipino nurses and other health care workers to the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany in exchange for vaccines against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The “palit bakuna” initiative of the labor department, according to Drilon, is a “sign of desperation.”

“[It’s] a wrong policy and sets a bad precedent. Bakit tayo umabot sa ganito? Ganito na ba tayo kadesperado? Our health care workers are not commodities they can trade off,” the senator said.

“For the government to go this far as trading off its Filipino health care workers in exchange for vaccines means something is not right in the government’s coronavirus vaccination strategy,” Drilon added.

On Tuesday, Feb. 23, Alice Visperas, director of the labor ministry’s international affairs bureau, disclosed that DOLE Secretary Silvestre Bello III offered to lift the cap on the deployment of health care workers to the two European nations in exchange for at least 600,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

Drilon, a former DOLE secretary, advised Bello junk the offer.

“Hindi po kasama sa mandato ng DOLE ang ‘palit bakuna’. Our focus should be on protecting the rights and welfare of our overseas Filipino workers especially during these trying times,” he said.

In a virtual forum on Wednesday, Feb. 24, DOLE-Information and Publication Service (IPS) director Rolly Francia clarified that it is not the department’s intention to treat health care workers as commodity for the purpose of getting COVID-19 vaccines.

“The Department wishes to correct the sort of misquoted notion headed by some quarters about the intentions of sending or for the lifting of the cap in the number of nurses being requested by UK and Germany. It is not the intention of the Department to treat them as material things and trade them to be able to secure vaccines,” he said

“That is wrong. It is also not the intention to treat them as commodity and have them barter with whatever material they, we may have,” Francia added.IMT