INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
http://youtu.be/R_OcRUq-CEs
An ILO-produced film documents the opportunities and obstacles on the path taken by migrant health-care workers from the Philippines.
The prospect of a better future for her son is what drove Ellen Dollaga to leave her child. The 27-year old single mother moved from the Philippines to work as a nurse in Taiwan, China.
“I left my baby when he was just six months old,” Dollaga recalls. “It’s important for a mum to see and to hear her baby say Mummy, his first word and his first walk. Yet, I sacrificed all this and a lot of happy moments to earn money. There was a time when my son never knew his mother.”
After two years working in a nursing home in Taiwan, China, Dollaga returned to the Philippines. Her foreign work experience and her foreign language skills opened more opportunities, and she was among the first batch of Filipino nurses who qualified to work in Germany, under a bilateral mobility agreement.
Dollaga was happy with the help the arrangement gave her. “Through this bilateral agreement nurses no longer have to pay placement fees. Processing time takes three to four months or less. It saves time, effort and of course money on our part.”
She now works as a nurse in Frankfurt, Germany, and is fulfilling her promise to support her family. “My goal is to get my child to go to Germany after three to five years. If I can petition my parents, then I will take care of them together with my son.”
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