Fil-Am lawyer wants individual counsels for NY trial of Pinay nurses

Article posted April 06, 2007 - 11:44 AM
http://www.gmanews.tv/print/37242

The Filipino-American lawyer defending the 10 Filipino nurses on trial in New York for conspiracy and child abandonment wants the Philippine government to provide his clients with individual lawyers.

In a press statement sent to GMANews.TV, Salvador Tuy accused the government of abandoning the plight of the distressed Filipino nurses, including medical doctor Elmer Jacinto who left the Philippines to work as a nurse in New York, who walked out of a home care facility for disabled children in April last year.

They were accused of conspiracy and for endangering the lives of their patients when they walked out allegedly without proper notice. The nurse complained that SentosaCare that recruited them to New York failed to comply with the terms of their contract, a matter they supposedly brought to the attention of the concerned authorities.

Salvador Tuy represented the nurses when they were arraigned last month before Judge Robert Doyle of the Riverhead Country Criminal Court. The nurses and their lawyer Felix Vinluan pleaded 'not guilty' to the charges filed against them.

Tuy said the Philippine Consulate General in New York City only promised to secure funding for the defense of the nurses, but not to provide individual counsels at the government's expense.

Tuy accused the Philippine government of taking the side of the nurses' recruiter purportedly because of its close association with a former official of Malacanang.

Tuy also wanted the government to suspend Sentosa's license to recruit while the country and thousands of Filipina nurses are awaiting the outcome of the case in New York where contract violations were allegedly committed against 55 Filipina nurses who were recruited to work in the USA .

"This is to protect more Filipinas from suffering the same fate as those now in the USA and facing trial just because they had the guts and temerity to file administrative charges against Sentosa," Tuy stated.

On April 6, 2006, lawyer Felix Vinluan filed discrimination charges on behalf of 28 Filipino nurses and physical therapist against several New York-based nursing home facilities affiliated with Sentosa Recruitment Agency.

Sentosa Recruitment Agency supposedly recruited the 28 Filipino healthcare workers and had them sponsored as immigrant workers by its NY-based nursing home affiliated facilities.

The nurses signed individual employment contracts with their respective nursing home-petitioners. Upon their arrival in the United States, most of them were not given immediate employment.

Some were initially made to work as clerks with much lesser salaries. Most of them were assigned at facilities different from the nursing home facilities that sponsored them.

Their working hours were reduced from 37.5 hours a week to 35 hours a week. And all of them, without exception, were not made direct-hire employees of their respective petitioning employers. Instead, they were made agency employees of Sentosa Services/Prompt Nursing Employment Agency, a non-entity to their employment contracts.

The nurses received their salaries and employment benefits from Sentosa Services/Prompt Nursing Employment Agency.

The nurses claimed that had they been directly employed, they would have been directly-hired employees of their respective petitioning employers and would have received the salary rates and benefits being received by regular employees of their petitioning employers.