Indonesian nurses lured to Netherlands under false pretenses to fill healthcare gaps

Experienced Indonesian nurses are lured to the Netherlands under false pretenses to fill gaps in the Dutch healthcare system. They work many more hours than agreed and are not getting the training they were promised, NU.nl reports after speaking to involved students. “We are overworked, exploited, and left to our own devices here,” one told the newspaper.

The nurses work in the Netherlands via the AVANS+ University of Applied Sciences and partner company Your Medical Matchmaker (Yomema) and obtain their Dutch HBO nursing diploma at the same time. Instead of working the promised 16 hours, the students work up to 40 hours a week. 24 of those hours are unpaid, written up as intern hours. And instead of getting training for management positions in hospitals, the Indonesian nurses mainly work in nursing homes and as home nurses. NU.nl spoke to six students who all have the same experience.

A 32-year-old woman signed up for the study-work program in 2019. Instead of six months, it took two years for her to get her work visa. Once in the Netherlands, she and her fellow students weren’t allowed where they wanted to work and do their internship. “While we were promised that. The only options were home care or the nursing home,” she said to NU.nl. “But many nurses enrolled in this program want to work in the hospital.”

“People with a student visa are not allowed to work more than 16 hours a week in the Netherlands in addition to their studies. But we are obliged to do an internship at least two days a week in addition to a side job of 16 hours a week,” she said. “My internship contract even states that I have to do an internship 24 hours a week.” And it turned out that her part-time job and internship contained exactly the same duties at the same institution. “As a result, we work about 40 hours a week, of which we only get paid for 16 hours.”

Another student, a 33-year-old man, told NU.nl that they are struggling to make ends meet. “We do not get a travel allowance, and those who work in home care are expected to get a driver’s license and arrange a car at their own expense,” he said. Students must also do their driving lessons on their only day off in the week.

Yomema promised that students would be able to “contribute to improving Indonesian care” at the end of their studies. But according to the nurse, their studies and work have no connection to the Indonesian healthcare system. “In Indonesia, we hardly have any nursing homes or home care. In the end, they here in the Netherlands get far more from us than we do from them,” he said. “They think they can fool us into anything because we are not Dutch.” When they complain, they are told to go back to Indonesia, he said.

The Dutch Labor Inspectorate is investigating the situation, according to NU.nl. The immigration service IND told the newspaper that it wouldn’t grant any further student visas for this work-study program as long as the investigation is ongoing.

AVANS+ and Yomema wouldn’t respond to the specific allegations, according to NU.nl. But they did say that they have every confidence in the quality of the training. According to them, the students rate the course as above average. AVANS+ and Yomema also said that they comply with all laws and regulations and await the Inspectorate’s investigation with confidence.