The government has started sending Filipino home-based caregivers to Israel, according to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).
According to POEA Administrator Bernard Olalia, this is based on the Bilateral Labor Agreement signed by Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III and Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Machluf in 2018.
“We took the initiative to address the concern and request of Israel for caregivers. Since we cannot disregard the fact that there are illegal recruiters here and there, Secretary Bello continues to remind OFWs to avoid dealing with bogus recruiters and under-the-table transactions that require placement fees of about P500,000,” said Olalia.
On Tuesday, July 27, 2021, 48 caregivers were included in the first batch of Filipinos to sail to Israel and were greeted by the Philippine Embassy and Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) officials at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.
According to Olalia, the said Filipinos are part of the first batch of 377 OFWs who should have been sent to Israel a year ago, but the processing of their documents was delayed, and they were caught in a lockdown due to the pandemic.
PH starts sending caregivers to Israel
November 2020, when the POEA Government Placement Branch announced 500 vacant positions for home-based caregivers on their website, which were flooded with 1,375 applicants.
“We are now processing the documents of the qualified applicants for the 2nd round of recruitment, and this time, we are looking at more than 1,000 OFWs who will undergo the usual process of selection, hiring, and matching with their respective employers in Israel,” said Olalia.
OFWs who are still in Israel are not required to be vaccinated, but they will be subjected to the COVID-19 test and mandatory institutional quarantine protocols when they arrive there.
Aside from caregivers, there is also high demand in Israel for household service workers and nurses.
“To date, we have not reached the 6,500 ceiling on the annual overseas deployment of health care workers (HCWs). However, more countries are opening their doors for Filipino HCWs, so we are meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to recommend the increase of deployment cap, as urged by medical groups,” said Olalia.
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