Staring June 1, Kuwait will not allow foreign workers to attend medical treatment in public hospitals in the mornings after receiving complaints from some Kuwaiti patients “for having to wait long hours at public hospitals due to the large number of foreigners.”

Moreover, foreign nationals who will seek medical treatment can visit public hospitals in the evenings. The new rule will start at the clinics at Jahra hospitals for six months on a “trial basis before its application at other (government) hospitals”.

Kuwait offers free medical attention to Kuwaiti nationals but requires foreigners to pay an annual fee of $175. There are about 2.6 million of foreign workers in Kuwait mostly from the Philippines India, Pakistan Bangladesh, Egypt and Syria.

The new rule faces protests from some activist groups saying the new rule is “racist”.

The US Embassy Manila has announced that they will no longer allow walk-in applications for US visa starting May 8, 2013. Moreover, those who will apply for US visa should register for an appointment online at http://www.ustraveldocs.com/ph or call US embassy at 982-5555 902-8930 from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday to Friday.

For documentations, applicants may send it to any branch of 2Go courier service (Attn: Immigrant Visa Unit) together with a copy of the embassy’s 221g refusal letter (MNL-IV-22A).
However, US Embassy clarifies that they will allow walk-in visa applicants but on case to case basis.

“Applicants with emergency needs (i.e., aging out cases, visa correction requests, and expiring visas) will be allowed to come in on a case-by-case basis,” it said.

Applicants with questions regarding their case should contact the Immigrant Visa Unit by email at IVManilaReplies@state.gov.

Police officials in Pasay City alerted Filipinos who are returning from abroad about a modus operandi operated near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) that targets them. They are advised to be cautious against opening the doors or windows of their vehicles to beggars or streetchildren that might approach them along the streets near NAIA to avoid being hurt or losing valuables. This modus is apparently done by a gang called “gagamba boys,” a group of males which are mostly in their teens.

According to Rodolfo Llorca, the chief Senior Superintendent of Pasay City police, a member of the gang would persistently knock or rap on the vehicles of balikbayans and when the passenger finally opened it, other gang members would proceed to take whatever valuable items that they can get. The poor victims take the risk of being hurt if they resist as there are cases when gang members hit the heads of the victims.

Llorca also said that these “gagamba boys” usually schedule their attack around 9 am because they know that this is the usual arrival time of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). It is also a time when traffic is worse so they can freely do their scam.

The Pasay police chief admitted that they are having a difficult time stopping this modus because they cannot arrest the gang members which are mostly minors. They can only turn them over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) which would also release them after a few hours or a few days.

An advisory from the POEA warns nurses and other medical workers against the proliferation of overseas job scams that are being offered via email. Previous advisories from POEA informed that there are email scams that offer non-existent jobs for medical workers in countries like Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and United States of America.

To lure nurses and caregivers, Cacdac said that in the past emails, the scammers are using the names of famous hospitals overseas such as Queensway Carleton Hospital, Stevenson Memorial Hospital, Shouldice Hospital, and Fraser Health in  Canada; Sydney Adventist Hospital in Australia. The latest advisory revealed that email scams are also offering jobs in Singapore.

The POEA Chief, Hans Leo J. Cacdac was informed of this new email scam through Mr. Tan Zhiyi, the Human Resource Division of Singapore General Hospital which reported that they have received a number of inquiries from Filipino workers who are verifying job offers sent through the following email addresses: singaporegenhosp@zoho.com, singaporegeneralhosp @ojooo.com and singaporegenhosp@hush.com.

According to Cacdac, Tan said that they are not using the email addresses mentioned because their official emails use the internet address sgh.com.sg.

In the said email, the recipient are asked to send Php3,800 through bank deposit as payment for the visa interview. The Singapore-based official also denied that their company owns the bank account mentioned in the email.

Read more news about Filipino nurses here. 

An agency that recruits Filipino workers to Canada, Nanhaya International Recruitment, Inc. loses its license for allegedly violating laws on Philippine overseas employment. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) also bans Go West International, its partner placement agency in Canada from recruiting workers from the Philippines.

According to an advisory posted in the official website of POEA, Administrator Hans Leo J. Cacdac said that the complaint against Nanhaya was initiated by their agency on September 2012 because of the following violations: illegal collection of placement fee, misrepresentation, and other recruitment violations.

Read more about this story by clicking the link below:
POEA Cancels License of Agency Recruiting OFWs in Canada, Ban its Overseas Partner