LONDON: Indian nurses are losing out to Filipinos in the rush for jobs in Britain.
"The highest number of nurses applying and registering are from the Philippines," a spokeswoman of the Nursing and Midwifery Council said.
Over the past 12 months as many as 70,000 nurses from the Philippines and over 30,000 from India have applied for work in Britain.
But the number of Indian nurses who have actually registered is a small fraction of the number of applicants.
The last 12 months have also seen about 25,000 applicants from South Africa and 19,000 from Australia. But the number of applicants from South Africa is coming down.
During 2001-02 as many as 7,235 nurses from the Philippines came to work in Britain compared to just 994 from India. "The trend over the past 12 months is similar," the spokeswoman said.
This means that many more Indian than Filipino nurses are getting turned down.
Britain is short of about 25,000 nurses, and has had to fill the gaps with nurses from outside. In 1998-99 only 52 nurses came from the Philippines, and 30 from India.
In the year ending March 2002, a total of 41,656 nurses and midwives from overseas, or non-European Union countries, applied for registration -- 43 per cent more than in the previous year.
Over 23,000 of them had to undertake a period of supervised practice, while only about 480 were rejected outright. The Philippines and India were the source countries for over half the applicants.
In the same period, 13,721 were actually registered -- an increase of 63 per cent.
