They are young and most of them are women. This is the most glaring fact about the country’s migrant workers during the recently-launched State of Philippine Population Report 4 (SPP4), which was centered on the issue of migration and population.
BY NOEL SALES BARCELONA
Contributed to Bulatlat
MIGRANT WATCH
Vol. VII, No. 44, December 9-15, 2007
They are young and most of them are women.
This is the most glaring fact about the country’s migrant workers during the recently-launched State of Philippine Population Report 4 (SPP4), which was centered on the issue of migration and population.
In its soft launch at the 7th Usapang Population and Development (Usapang PopDev) sponsored by the Forum for Family Planning and Development, Inc. (FFPD) last November, Dr. Grace Cruz, a commissioner of the Philippine Commission on Population (POPCOM), said that unlike before, women now outnumbered men in terms of getting jobs overseas.
According to the SPP4, the median age of women going abroad is 32 years, or three years younger than men.
Based on the 2004 and 2006 data of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), most of the newly hired Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) are females.
“Unlike before, in the 1970s, most of the workers going abroad, these past few years, are women trying their luck overseas,” said Cruz.
This phenomenon, according to Cruz, is because of the surging demand for caregivers and nurses – most of whom are women.
“There is a clear manifestation of the feminization of overseas labor,” said Cruz.
SPP4 also revealed that, most of the OFWs were from Southern Tagalog Region (Region IV-A or the Cavite-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon/CALABARZON areas) and the National Capital Region (NCR).
“In the Survey on Overseas Filipinos (SOF) conducted in 2006, it says that 16.8 percent of the Filipinos who got hired abroad came from CALABARZON; 16.4 percent are from the NCR; while 14.5 came from Central Luzon,” said Cruz.
Among the top destinations of our kababayans (compatriots) going abroad for work are the Middle East, other parts of Asia, Europe and the Americas. In Middle East alone, there are an estimated 462,545 documented Filipinos working while there are only a little over 200,000 documented Filipinos working in other parts of Asia, in 2006, data from SPP4 revealed.
This year, there are an estimated 3.8 million Filipinos working abroad as overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) while there are 8.5 million Filipinos (some say 10 million) immigrants in almost 100 countries the world over.
Highly-educated Pinoys, Pinays going abroad
There is also an increasing number of highly-educated Filipinos who are going abroad to work. According to the SPP4, four out of every 10 OFWs reached college level while three are high school graduates.
“There are OFWs who had post-graduate schooling though only a handful,” she said. These, furthered Cruz, formed the minority of the OFWs who work as professionals (teachers, doctors, etc.), technicians, and clerical workers.
Though a minority, still a major problem
However, this “minority” can make a “majority” problem in terms of service rendition like education and health care, said FFPD president Benjamin de Leon.
“This brain drain (continued departure of skilled and educated workers), takes away our much needed professionals needed for our own country’s development. This affects the country’s education, health delivery systems, and industries as hundreds of thousands of our teachers, nurses, and doctors taking up nursing, leave the country for a job abroad to support their families,” De Leon said.
In the year 2000, there were about 3,500 Filipino nurses who left the country, De Leon said citing data from the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2004, there were an estimated 6,000 doctors enrolled in nursing schools, hoping to work as care-givers or nurses abroad.
“Imagine this—15,000 health professionals or nurses, leave the country yearly, according to WHO. What will happen to us, in the years to come?” said De Leon.
Poverty still the push factor
“But how can we blame them? Our governmet can’t provide them adequate work and the poverty incidence here in the Philippines is terribly increasing,” De Leon lamented.
In the 2007 data of the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES), 7.8 percent of the 36.16 million Filipino workforce are unemployed while 22 percent are underemployed. This translates to 2.83 million and 7.33 million respectively.
“Even if the gross domestic product (GDP) registered a 6.9-percent growth for the first quarter of the year and said to be the highest in the past 17 years, this is immaterial for the fact remains there are about 69 million Filipinos or 80 percent of the population struggle to survive on P96 ($2) or less a day and there are about 46 million Filipinos going hungry everyday,” a recent study by the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research, Inc. (EILER) read.
“In terms of salaries and wages, with the continuous decline of the purchasing power of peso—P0.71 on June 2007, compared on 2000 prices—it is impossible to survive on mere P350 a day, considering that the daily cost of living in Metro-Manila is approximately P788,” the EILER study pointed out .
“We understand that the government needs the billions of dollars of remittances to save our ailing economy. But we also urge the government to come up with comprehensive policy programs to end the continuous cycle of exporting labor aimed to improve and uplift the living conditions of the poor and provide the basic necessary services to the people,” De Leon added.
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SIDEBAR
Migration: Buoying the Economy
From 1995 to 2006, there was an estimated $87.64 billion worth of remittances sent to the Philippines by the OFWs, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
This year, it is estimated that $17 billion dollars worth of remittances will enter the country, according to Ms. Rosabel Guerrero, deputy director of the Department of Economics and Statistics of the BSP.
“These are only through formal (bank) channels. It is probably bigger, if we included those which entered the country through informal means,” she said in an interview.
“More remittances mean more dollar reserves, more money to finance imports and improve the country’s balance of payment position which enhanced its credit worthiness,” explained Guerrero.
Based on the BSP records, from 36 percent in 1989 the country’s dollar reserves increased to 69 percent in 2005.
“This helped insulate the local economy from foreign currency fluctuations and boosted the value of peso,” BSP explained.
As of this writing, the peso rallied against the dollar at $1:P41.88.
However, despite the increasing number of OFWs (presently estimated at 120 per hour or almost 3,000 Filipinos a day) leaving the country, former Labor Attaché to Japan and Korea Rey de Luz Conferido denies that labor export is a policy by the government and that the national government relies heavily on OFW remittances to make the economy afloat.
“It is not true. Besides the OFW remittances, we have other source of income like our export and agriculture,” said Conferido.
Meanwhile, he said that Japan heavily needs “reinforcement” in its maritime and other industries such as information and communication technology (ICT) and construction.
“There are 1.16 million supervisors are going to retire in Japan in the next three years, and our kababayans have the capacity to fill these positions. On the other hand, there is a great need in the Japanese seafaring industry for well-trained seafarers,” Conferido said.
He also said that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is coming up with a $1-trillion project, called mega-cities, where Filipinos would be “very much qualified to work.” Contributed to Bulatlat.
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