By Cherry T. Lim
Would the global crisis be putting the brakes on remittance boom?
NOT too long ago, those who left the country to work as nurses, doctors, engineers, teachers, managers and entertainers abroad were deemed unpatriotic.
But when the Philippines discovered how much the economy could benefit from the billions of dollars these overseas Filipino workers (OFW) remitted to their families back home, the love flowed and the OFWs are now called “Bagong Bayani” or “Modern Heroes.”
Last year alone, OFW remittances hit $16.4 billion (almost P800 billion), representing 10 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
“Roughly, this means remittances funded one out of every P10 spent on the goods and services produced in our economy,” wrote former socio-economic planning secretary Cielito Habito in a newspaper column.
Dependent
A quarter of the country’s families are highly dependent on OFW remittances, the Philippines admitted in a report to the United Nations.
Put differently, without remittances, there would be 4.3 million more poor Filipinos today, said Asian Development Bank economist Kelly Bird in another report.
This is why it is in the country’s interest to keep the OFWs employed.
Few displaced
Seeking to allay fears of a massive OFW displacement as the recession in the United States enters its 17th month, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) Regional Center for Visayas Director Evelia Durato said that from late last year to Feb. 13, only 5,332 OFWs had been laid off from 141 companies worldwide.
And in the first quarter of this year, only 186 displaced OFWs had gone to the POEA’s Cebu office for help, mostly to get a refund on their placement fee, since they had been unable to finish their employment contract through no fault of their own.
But she said some OFWs had already returned to Taiwan, where more than 90 percent of the displacements had occurred.
“It seems that the displacements have stopped,” Durato said.
If anything, workers are needed for the approved job orders still waiting to be filled.
Of the 754,788 job orders approved by the POEA nationwide from Oct. 1, 2008 to Feb. 15, 2009, unfilled as of Feb. 16 were 477,481 posts.
Durato said that in the past five years, despite the crisis, the number of contracts the POEA processed in its Visayas offices had grown yearly.
Last year, it processed 49,330 contracts in the Visayas, up 15 percent from a year ago.
But the number of workers deployed, meaning those who actually left the Philippines to start their work at the jobsites, grew by only eight percent to 28,987 during the same period.
Lucrative
Going overseas is a lucrative deal for OFWs.
Durato said a ship stewardess could earn as much as $3,100 (P145,000) a month. A ship electrician could get $6,000 (P280,000) a month.
Other workers get less, though.
Domestic helpers should get a minimum monthly salary of $400 (P18,800). But some laborers earn just a little over $200 (P9,400).
“But sometimes, they also have overtime pay or get free food,” she said.
At times, the employer also pays for their plane fare.
“It depends on the (employment) contract,” Durato said. “But if the salary is already very low, POEA will ask for an offsetting mechanism.”
Brain drain
In 2008, the World Bank ranked the Philippines as the fourth-largest remittance-receiving country, after India, China and Mexico, making the financial benefits to the Philippines clear.
But what about the costs of the export of labor, as seen from the loss of economic potential with the exodus of highly skilled workers?
It has been hard for analysts to measure the exact economic toll, but a study released last year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed what proportion of Filipinos aged 15 and above living in the OECD area are college graduates: 46.7 percent.
These tertiary-educated migrants made up 7.4 percent of the Philippines’ tertiary-educated population, representing the country’s brain drain rate, according to “A Profile of Immigrant Populations in the 21st Century.”
The OECD comprises 30 of the richest countries in the world, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Finland.
Hit by crisis
And this exodus could continue. That’s if external market conditions don’t mess up the Philippine government’s rosy projections for overseas job prospects.
As the global crisis hit, Hazel Mae Gitgano, branch manager of the Magsaysay Maritime Corp.-Cebu office, said, seamen are now being made to take longer vacations from work.
“Normally, the vacation is about two months. That’s their rotation period,” said the manning agency official. “But starting this year, it is four months already.”
Fewer requests
She also said there had been a reduction in employers’ requests for new seafarers.
“Some vessels have stopped sailing, like container vessels and car ships,” but not to the point that they have asked the seamen to go home, she said.
She emphasized that the demand for ship officers continued to be robust, though, because there are few of them.
There are many lower-ranked seamen, she said, but they do not take the Professional Regulation Commission board exams required to move up the ranks, citing the lack of money for the test and the three- to seven-day training required afterward.
Going home
On the land-based front, Department of Trade and Industry-National Economic Research and Business Assistance Center 7 manager Minerva Yap told Sun.Star Cebu of nurses working in Canada who had to return home because their hospitals were cutting down on personnel.
She said they are now looking for jobs in Cebu hospitals.
In New York, where many Filipino nurses work on an on-call basis, Yap said nurses talk of some hospitals they call for short-term jobs no longer calling them back.
And that’s not yet even considering the effects of the declaration last week of the Influenza A (H1N1) virus as a pandemic on the global economy.
Last March, OFW remittances grew by an anemic 3.04 percent.
The era of double-digit growths ended last December, despite government’s efforts to nurse them back to health.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
OFW money fails to bridge income inequality
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 12:50:00 03/28/2008
MAKATI CITY – EXTREME reliance on money from Filipinos overseas hasn’t helped the country get out of the poverty rut and may even hobble the poor’s income capability, says an economist.
Using government’s triennial Family Income and Expenditures Survey (FIES), University of the Philippines economist Ernesto Pernia said in a research that remittances from overseas Filipino workers may even be contributing to the persistence of high inequality in the country.
The 2003 and 2006 datasets of the FIES saw the total measure of inequality of wealth called ‘Gini coefficient’ hardly changing: 0.4605 Gini coefficient in 2003 and 0.4580 in 2006.
As overseas employment and permanent settlement continue to persist, Pernia said remittances “could result to a further worsening of income inequality…”
“Such inequality tends to dampen the poverty reduction effect of remittances—FIES reveals that poverty incidence rose to 32.9 percent in 2006 from 30 percent in 2003.” The poverty incidence figure reflects that percentage of the population that is considered poor.
The recently-released 2006 FIES showed there were 27.6 million poor Filipinos, some 3.6 million more than the survey’s last conduct in 2003. This means the number of Filipinos who said they were poor increased to 700,000 or a total of 4.7 million poor families in 2006.
In a press conference early March, socio-economic planning secretary Augusto Santos declined to link remittances and income gap between the “haves” and have-nots.” He said he wants to the 2009 FIES done first before citing effects of remittances to poverty and inequality.
But Pernia, using data on the FIES covering the years 1994, 1997, 2000, and 2003, noted that while remittances expanded household incomes, the gain is smaller for the lower quintile groups (21.5 percent) compared to the upper quintile group (46.3 percent).
“Despite their beneficial effects, remittances cannot be relied on as a principal instrument for reducing poverty or fostering the country’s long-run development,” he said in his paper titled “Migration, Remittances, Poverty, and Inequality.”
Benefits
Of course, Pernia said, benefits of OFW remittances to purses of Filipinos cannot be discounted. His data analyses reveal that remittances have positive and significant effects on the well-being of poor households, particularly the two lowest income quintiles of the poor.
If the first poorest income quintile group increases remittance receipts by P1,000 per capita, it leads to P1,789 additional annual family spending per person.
Meanwhile, for the second poorest income quintile group, the household expenditure per capita rises to P2,177 for every P1,000 additional per capita remittance.
Pernia says, the positive effect on remittances on all these households’ well-being rises to the point that remittances “become insignificant for the next higher quintiles,” and these “probably matter less to richer families.”
“The positive effect of remittances on household incomes rises monotonically from 1 percent for the lowest quintile, 4.8 percent for middle quintile, and 16 percent for the top quintile,” Pernia said.
Without remittances, the Philippines would have more than 26.5 million poor. Thanks to remittances, the poverty headcount is lower at 24 million, Pernia’s data found.
Having remittances as a share in a household’s income “raises the likelihood (that a) household will get out of poverty,” Pernia said.
“Poverty incidence for the bottom quintile was slightly reduced by 0.1 percent, and by 13 percent for the second quintile, while that in all three upper quintiles were completely wiped out,” he added.
Aside from the FIES data, Pernia also processed information from the annual Survey on Overseas Filipinos, and the quarterly Labor Force Survey of the National Statistics Office. He also used gross regional domestic product data from the national income accounts to see the regional development impact of remittances.
A Gap
Regions that have more overseas workers benefit more from remittances compared to other regions that have fewer OFWs, Pernia said.
Remittances have brought positive and significant effects on poverty reduction in the regions – to the point that a 10 percent increase in the ratio of remittance per capita to gross regional domestic product (GRDP) per capita sees a 2.6-percent increase of households lifted out of poverty, Pernia said.
Ironically, these benefits of remittances to regional development “do not matter to the worst-off as much as the better-off.” Pernia found that regional development does not benefit low-income household as much as it does higher income families.
Six of the country’s ten poorest provinces are in the Mindanao island group, while provinces with the lowest poverty incidence rates were in Luzon, FIES data showed. Data also showed that poverty rates in the regions increased, and that provincial poverty measures also highlighted regional income disparities.
Pernia conjectured that had Filipinos stayed to work within the country’s borders, domestic remittances appeared to be “more welfare-enhancing for the poor than are international remittances.” Remittances are good for the poor, “but even better for the less poor and better-off,” he reiterated.
But socio-economic planning secretary Augusto Santos emphasized during the press briefing that at least the 32.9-percent poverty incidence rate in 2006 is lower than 33 percent rate in the year 2000.
The number of individual Filipinos who are poor may be lower in 2006 (26.9 million) compared to year 2000 figures (27.5 million). Still, FIES data showed that the number of Filipino families who are poor rose to 4.7 million in 2006 from 4.2 million in 2000.
The increase is glaring because the country posted consistent higher GDP rates, fueled by consumption in turn powered by remittances.
Santos said the country’s GDP growth and improved fiscal condition “provided us enough breathing space to spend more on social services in the years ahead.”
He added that the rise of poverty incidence is “an income distribution issue,” even while the Philippines continues to receive billion-dollar remittances from OFWs.
First Posted 12:50:00 03/28/2008
MAKATI CITY – EXTREME reliance on money from Filipinos overseas hasn’t helped the country get out of the poverty rut and may even hobble the poor’s income capability, says an economist.
Using government’s triennial Family Income and Expenditures Survey (FIES), University of the Philippines economist Ernesto Pernia said in a research that remittances from overseas Filipino workers may even be contributing to the persistence of high inequality in the country.
The 2003 and 2006 datasets of the FIES saw the total measure of inequality of wealth called ‘Gini coefficient’ hardly changing: 0.4605 Gini coefficient in 2003 and 0.4580 in 2006.
As overseas employment and permanent settlement continue to persist, Pernia said remittances “could result to a further worsening of income inequality…”
“Such inequality tends to dampen the poverty reduction effect of remittances—FIES reveals that poverty incidence rose to 32.9 percent in 2006 from 30 percent in 2003.” The poverty incidence figure reflects that percentage of the population that is considered poor.
The recently-released 2006 FIES showed there were 27.6 million poor Filipinos, some 3.6 million more than the survey’s last conduct in 2003. This means the number of Filipinos who said they were poor increased to 700,000 or a total of 4.7 million poor families in 2006.
In a press conference early March, socio-economic planning secretary Augusto Santos declined to link remittances and income gap between the “haves” and have-nots.” He said he wants to the 2009 FIES done first before citing effects of remittances to poverty and inequality.
But Pernia, using data on the FIES covering the years 1994, 1997, 2000, and 2003, noted that while remittances expanded household incomes, the gain is smaller for the lower quintile groups (21.5 percent) compared to the upper quintile group (46.3 percent).
“Despite their beneficial effects, remittances cannot be relied on as a principal instrument for reducing poverty or fostering the country’s long-run development,” he said in his paper titled “Migration, Remittances, Poverty, and Inequality.”
Benefits
Of course, Pernia said, benefits of OFW remittances to purses of Filipinos cannot be discounted. His data analyses reveal that remittances have positive and significant effects on the well-being of poor households, particularly the two lowest income quintiles of the poor.
If the first poorest income quintile group increases remittance receipts by P1,000 per capita, it leads to P1,789 additional annual family spending per person.
Meanwhile, for the second poorest income quintile group, the household expenditure per capita rises to P2,177 for every P1,000 additional per capita remittance.
Pernia says, the positive effect on remittances on all these households’ well-being rises to the point that remittances “become insignificant for the next higher quintiles,” and these “probably matter less to richer families.”
“The positive effect of remittances on household incomes rises monotonically from 1 percent for the lowest quintile, 4.8 percent for middle quintile, and 16 percent for the top quintile,” Pernia said.
Without remittances, the Philippines would have more than 26.5 million poor. Thanks to remittances, the poverty headcount is lower at 24 million, Pernia’s data found.
Having remittances as a share in a household’s income “raises the likelihood (that a) household will get out of poverty,” Pernia said.
“Poverty incidence for the bottom quintile was slightly reduced by 0.1 percent, and by 13 percent for the second quintile, while that in all three upper quintiles were completely wiped out,” he added.
Aside from the FIES data, Pernia also processed information from the annual Survey on Overseas Filipinos, and the quarterly Labor Force Survey of the National Statistics Office. He also used gross regional domestic product data from the national income accounts to see the regional development impact of remittances.
A Gap
Regions that have more overseas workers benefit more from remittances compared to other regions that have fewer OFWs, Pernia said.
Remittances have brought positive and significant effects on poverty reduction in the regions – to the point that a 10 percent increase in the ratio of remittance per capita to gross regional domestic product (GRDP) per capita sees a 2.6-percent increase of households lifted out of poverty, Pernia said.
Ironically, these benefits of remittances to regional development “do not matter to the worst-off as much as the better-off.” Pernia found that regional development does not benefit low-income household as much as it does higher income families.
Six of the country’s ten poorest provinces are in the Mindanao island group, while provinces with the lowest poverty incidence rates were in Luzon, FIES data showed. Data also showed that poverty rates in the regions increased, and that provincial poverty measures also highlighted regional income disparities.
Pernia conjectured that had Filipinos stayed to work within the country’s borders, domestic remittances appeared to be “more welfare-enhancing for the poor than are international remittances.” Remittances are good for the poor, “but even better for the less poor and better-off,” he reiterated.
But socio-economic planning secretary Augusto Santos emphasized during the press briefing that at least the 32.9-percent poverty incidence rate in 2006 is lower than 33 percent rate in the year 2000.
The number of individual Filipinos who are poor may be lower in 2006 (26.9 million) compared to year 2000 figures (27.5 million). Still, FIES data showed that the number of Filipino families who are poor rose to 4.7 million in 2006 from 4.2 million in 2000.
The increase is glaring because the country posted consistent higher GDP rates, fueled by consumption in turn powered by remittances.
Santos said the country’s GDP growth and improved fiscal condition “provided us enough breathing space to spend more on social services in the years ahead.”
He added that the rise of poverty incidence is “an income distribution issue,” even while the Philippines continues to receive billion-dollar remittances from OFWs.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Clash and culture
By Cherry T. Lim
Lunatic or just stressed out, Pinoys struggle with life abroad amid weak support system
IN THE 1990s, an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) from Dalaguete, Cebu killed the baby of her employer in Brunei.
The motive was a mystery as the employer had been kind to the OFW, said Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa) 7 Officer-in-Charge Mae Codilla.
The OFW’s family was later found to have a history of mental illness.
“Some OFWs have family problems already before they leave,” Codilla said. “When they go abroad, they are subjected to more pressures. There are many things to adjust to: a different culture, language, climate, food, nature of work,” so they snap there.
Last year, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) proposed to enhance the psychological testing of OFWs before their departure to ensure their fitness for overseas work.
But this move was met with criticism by the international alliance of Filipino migrant groups Migrante International, which said instead of branding OFWs as “lunatics,” the government should look into the poor working conditions that are the major factors driving OFWs to near-insanity.
Culture shock
From 2007 to the first half of 2008, the Owwa 7 provided airport assistance to three OFWs who were mentally ill.
Jelyn Yap-Asensi, officer in charge at the Cebu Physicians’ Diagnostic Services Center, which performs medical and psychological exams for OFWs going to the Middle East, said it was more likely that OFWs who snapped in the Middle East suffered from “culture shock.”
“Dili na sila boang,” she said. (They were not crazy to begin with.)
Stricter
Arabs are stricter on the physical and mental state of their workers, she said. That is why the medical and psychological exams for those going to the Middle East are more stringent. This means those who passed the exams were really fit to work.
Asensi admitted, though, that some people have slower coping mechanisms than others, which can create problems in environments with many stressors.
She said some domestic helpers in the Middle East were not allowed to go out, were given less than the salary promised, or could not rest. Some also suffered sexual harassment at the hands of employers.
As for the male OFWs, the stresses of living in the Middle East cause them to get into brawls with fellow OFWs, said Joselito Atienza, Cebu manager of Batangueño Human Resources Inc., which sends workers to the Middle East, South America and Africa.
In Saudi Arabia, in particular, he said: “The outlet (for one’s emotions) is very limited. There is no cinema, no disco house.
The Church is underground.”
Parties are same-sex only. Liquor and gambling are not allowed, said Atienza, who worked there for 20 years until 2007.
He said 80 percent of OFW fights were over jealousy at the other having a better position or pay.
Bad joke
Atienza warned against making “unnecessary jokes.” He described what happened with two OFWs who had been roommates in a flat in Saudi Arabia.
“One put photos of his beautiful wife on his side of the room. The other one was happy-go-lucky. On salary day, they talked.
The guy with the beautiful wife said he had remitted 90 percent of his salary. The other guy said, ‘Your wife’s other man is very lucky.’”
That night, as the joker slept, his roommate stabbed him to death.
Atienza said it is not helpful to tell OFWs of problems at home, or even to suggest that there could be problems at home, because being far away, they are unable to do anything about them, so this will just give them added stress.
Sea-based workers also experience culture shock, said Fr. Ulyses Desales, port chaplain of Apostleship of the Sea (AOS)-Cebu, as they have to live and work with people of different nationalities on a ship.
AOS, a worldwide apostolate, provides spiritual and psychological counseling and legal assistance to seamen.
But Desales said cases of mental illness among seamen were “few,” probably two or three only out of every 100 seafarers.
Attention deficit
To help OFWs, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA)-Visayas Director Evelia Durato said Philippine Overseas Labor Offices headed by a labor attaché are now assisted by Owwa welfare officers.
The Owwa website lists psycho-social counseling as among its jobsite services.
But it is unclear how this has been implemented since migrant workers’ groups say distressed OFWs cannot even get government’s attention on their concerns.
In a report last month, Migrante-Middle East said 63 OFWs in distress in the Middle East had still not been helped despite many of their cases already having been endorsed to the DFA and to the Philippine posts concerned. Most of the cases involved sexual, physical and emotional abuses, poor health conditions and withheld salaries.
If distressed OFWs do get repatriated and need counseling, Codilla said Owwa 7 refers them to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) 7 or religious groups.
“The DSWD will be the one to conduct home visits,” she said.
Debriefing
DSWD 7 Crisis Intervention Unit head Edna Regudo said the unit gives psycho-social support and stress debriefing.
It also provides shelter while the distressed OFWs process their boat tickets for their return to their home provinces in
Mindanao or other parts of the Visayas. It could also help pay for the OFW’s fare home.
“The undocumented workers are the ones that DSWD helps,” Regudo said, because those with the proper papers would be members of Owwa and have recourse to its services.
In 2007 and 2008, the DSWD 7 helped 43 OFWs, including those referred to it by Owwa 7.
The cases included those the DSWD 7 provided with medical assistance, like the Bohol OFW unable to finish her contract because she was found to have goiter, and those given transport aid after they were deported from the Middle East for illegal stay.
Regudo said those OFWs from the Middle East usually entered legally through an agency. Later, their stay became illegal when they did not finish their contracts (especially if they did not like their employers) and transferred to other employers.
Disabled
For OFWs rendered disabled by their overseas work, Owwa 7 Officer-in-Charge for the Programs and Services Division Rey Jacalan said there is a disability benefit of up to P100,000 under the Owwa’s insurance program, so long as the disability is work or contract related.
But the insurance covers only “physical disability or the non-functioning of any of the five senses,” he said.
Mental disability is not covered.
Unprepared
To help prepare OFWs for life overseas, the POEA and Owwa require them to attend the Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar (PDOS), which is supposed to include discussions on the host country’s customs, religion and labor laws.
But recruiter Atienza said workers he sends to the PDOS often say there was no discussion on the do’s and don’ts and the laws of the country they were going to, and that instead, what they learned was “how to get a loan from the Pag-ibig (Fund) and how to use a condom.”
A lot still has to be done to prepare Filipinos mentally and psychologically for work abroad, as well as to help them on-site to deal with the stresses of trying to fit into cultures alien to their own.
Lunatic or just stressed out, Pinoys struggle with life abroad amid weak support system
IN THE 1990s, an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) from Dalaguete, Cebu killed the baby of her employer in Brunei.
The motive was a mystery as the employer had been kind to the OFW, said Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa) 7 Officer-in-Charge Mae Codilla.
The OFW’s family was later found to have a history of mental illness.
“Some OFWs have family problems already before they leave,” Codilla said. “When they go abroad, they are subjected to more pressures. There are many things to adjust to: a different culture, language, climate, food, nature of work,” so they snap there.
Last year, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) proposed to enhance the psychological testing of OFWs before their departure to ensure their fitness for overseas work.
But this move was met with criticism by the international alliance of Filipino migrant groups Migrante International, which said instead of branding OFWs as “lunatics,” the government should look into the poor working conditions that are the major factors driving OFWs to near-insanity.
Culture shock
From 2007 to the first half of 2008, the Owwa 7 provided airport assistance to three OFWs who were mentally ill.
Jelyn Yap-Asensi, officer in charge at the Cebu Physicians’ Diagnostic Services Center, which performs medical and psychological exams for OFWs going to the Middle East, said it was more likely that OFWs who snapped in the Middle East suffered from “culture shock.”
“Dili na sila boang,” she said. (They were not crazy to begin with.)
Stricter
Arabs are stricter on the physical and mental state of their workers, she said. That is why the medical and psychological exams for those going to the Middle East are more stringent. This means those who passed the exams were really fit to work.
Asensi admitted, though, that some people have slower coping mechanisms than others, which can create problems in environments with many stressors.
She said some domestic helpers in the Middle East were not allowed to go out, were given less than the salary promised, or could not rest. Some also suffered sexual harassment at the hands of employers.
As for the male OFWs, the stresses of living in the Middle East cause them to get into brawls with fellow OFWs, said Joselito Atienza, Cebu manager of Batangueño Human Resources Inc., which sends workers to the Middle East, South America and Africa.
In Saudi Arabia, in particular, he said: “The outlet (for one’s emotions) is very limited. There is no cinema, no disco house.
The Church is underground.”
Parties are same-sex only. Liquor and gambling are not allowed, said Atienza, who worked there for 20 years until 2007.
He said 80 percent of OFW fights were over jealousy at the other having a better position or pay.
Bad joke
Atienza warned against making “unnecessary jokes.” He described what happened with two OFWs who had been roommates in a flat in Saudi Arabia.
“One put photos of his beautiful wife on his side of the room. The other one was happy-go-lucky. On salary day, they talked.
The guy with the beautiful wife said he had remitted 90 percent of his salary. The other guy said, ‘Your wife’s other man is very lucky.’”
That night, as the joker slept, his roommate stabbed him to death.
Atienza said it is not helpful to tell OFWs of problems at home, or even to suggest that there could be problems at home, because being far away, they are unable to do anything about them, so this will just give them added stress.
Sea-based workers also experience culture shock, said Fr. Ulyses Desales, port chaplain of Apostleship of the Sea (AOS)-Cebu, as they have to live and work with people of different nationalities on a ship.
AOS, a worldwide apostolate, provides spiritual and psychological counseling and legal assistance to seamen.
But Desales said cases of mental illness among seamen were “few,” probably two or three only out of every 100 seafarers.
Attention deficit
To help OFWs, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA)-Visayas Director Evelia Durato said Philippine Overseas Labor Offices headed by a labor attaché are now assisted by Owwa welfare officers.
The Owwa website lists psycho-social counseling as among its jobsite services.
But it is unclear how this has been implemented since migrant workers’ groups say distressed OFWs cannot even get government’s attention on their concerns.
In a report last month, Migrante-Middle East said 63 OFWs in distress in the Middle East had still not been helped despite many of their cases already having been endorsed to the DFA and to the Philippine posts concerned. Most of the cases involved sexual, physical and emotional abuses, poor health conditions and withheld salaries.
If distressed OFWs do get repatriated and need counseling, Codilla said Owwa 7 refers them to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) 7 or religious groups.
“The DSWD will be the one to conduct home visits,” she said.
Debriefing
DSWD 7 Crisis Intervention Unit head Edna Regudo said the unit gives psycho-social support and stress debriefing.
It also provides shelter while the distressed OFWs process their boat tickets for their return to their home provinces in
Mindanao or other parts of the Visayas. It could also help pay for the OFW’s fare home.
“The undocumented workers are the ones that DSWD helps,” Regudo said, because those with the proper papers would be members of Owwa and have recourse to its services.
In 2007 and 2008, the DSWD 7 helped 43 OFWs, including those referred to it by Owwa 7.
The cases included those the DSWD 7 provided with medical assistance, like the Bohol OFW unable to finish her contract because she was found to have goiter, and those given transport aid after they were deported from the Middle East for illegal stay.
Regudo said those OFWs from the Middle East usually entered legally through an agency. Later, their stay became illegal when they did not finish their contracts (especially if they did not like their employers) and transferred to other employers.
Disabled
For OFWs rendered disabled by their overseas work, Owwa 7 Officer-in-Charge for the Programs and Services Division Rey Jacalan said there is a disability benefit of up to P100,000 under the Owwa’s insurance program, so long as the disability is work or contract related.
But the insurance covers only “physical disability or the non-functioning of any of the five senses,” he said.
Mental disability is not covered.
Unprepared
To help prepare OFWs for life overseas, the POEA and Owwa require them to attend the Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar (PDOS), which is supposed to include discussions on the host country’s customs, religion and labor laws.
But recruiter Atienza said workers he sends to the PDOS often say there was no discussion on the do’s and don’ts and the laws of the country they were going to, and that instead, what they learned was “how to get a loan from the Pag-ibig (Fund) and how to use a condom.”
A lot still has to be done to prepare Filipinos mentally and psychologically for work abroad, as well as to help them on-site to deal with the stresses of trying to fit into cultures alien to their own.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Separate countries, separate lives
By Cherry T. Lim
(2nd of three parts)
INFIDELITY, drugs and other social problems plague OFW families
AFTER years away from home, an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) returned to the Philippines to find his wife pregnant by the family driver.
Furious, he fired the driver but tried to save the marriage.
"Matod Pa Sa Lola ni Noy Kulas." Join the story-writing contest on Cebuano folklore and win prizes.
Thus did Fr. Ulyses Desales describe the dark side of local unemployment: the forced separation of spouses for long stretches of time straining relationships, as breadwinners take jobs oceans away.
Desales, port chaplain of Apostleship of the Sea (AOS)-Cebu, considers “illicit affairs on both sides” as among the three common problems of OFWs, along with work injuries and financial mismanagement of the OFWs’ earnings.
An arm of the Archdiocese of Cebu, AOS-Cebu reaches out to seafarers through legal and family counseling. It also does values and conscience formation for seafarers’ families.
Unfaithful
Desales estimated that some 30-40 percent of seamen are unfaithful to their spouses, down from 60 percent just three years ago, he said, as seamen “became more professional and started to love their work” and AOS accommodated seafarers’ requests for masses aboard vessels.
Gerry Gonzales, Visayas regional coordinator of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (CBCP-Ecmi), said some nurses working abroad also find that their husbands in the Philippines have cheated on them, or worse, already have other families of their own.
Asked why the husbands don’t join their wives abroad when it is relatively easy for nurses to bring their families with them to their overseas postings, Gonzales said the husbands don’t want to go because they have an easy life in the Philippines, not working and just living on the dollars their wives send them.
Locals have a term for such men, “HRD” or “Husband Receiving Dollars.”
Poverty
Studies by the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) show that poverty is the main reason why people migrate, followed by unemployment.
In 2006, the daily expenditure was P681 for a family of five in Metro Manila, but the daily minimum wage was only P325, said the CFO.
Today, about 40 percent of Filipino families are migrant-related, 68 percent of which have one parent absent, and 32 percent having both parents absent.
The numbers are unnerving, as parental absence forces children of OFWs to seek direction in life from other sources, such as their extended family or the environment.
If the father is abroad, CFO data show, the influence of the extended family and the environment on the child of the OFW is 39 percent. This rises to 62 percent if it is the mother who is abroad, and to 84 percent if both parents are abroad.
Suffer the children
The effects on families have been devastating.
For every 10 families with OFWs, Desales estimates, some six to seven will have problems with their children, usually with the boys in the family.
These problems include children not listening to the parents and not taking their schooling seriously because they have much money to spend (from the remittances of their parents) or because there was no one to supervise them in their studies.
Desales said drug taking was a familiar problem with male children.
“Drug lords target the children of seafarers” as a market, knowing they have cash, he said.
CBCP-Ecmi’s Gonzales also said some girls get pregnant while still in high school.
Incest
But what is worse is the problem of incest between the fathers and daughters left behind by a rising number of Filipino mothers working abroad, said the nongovernment organization (NGO) Kanlungan Center in a national report.
A representative of a local NGO working with OFWs’ families in the Visayas said there are five cases of incest in Bohol.
“I heard it’s here in Cebu also, but it’s kept hidden,” said the representative, who requested anonymity.
Organizing families
The CBCP-Ecmi tries to help OFWs and their families in whatever way it can, even up to coordinating to provide paralegal services if needed.
But mainly, it organizes spouses of OFWs into groups for better information dissemination of OFW updates and training, including livelihood skills training. It also helps families understand migration realities so they can better deal with them.
There was an educational campaign in Cebu public schools and Catholic schools from 2002 to 2004 explaining to the children of OFWs why their parents had to work abroad and teaching them to save money.
Actually, Gonzales said, the children already know why their parents left, but they still ask why.
“They say they don’t need money but their presence,” he said.
So for those seeking a better life abroad, a caveat: For while many Filipinos who took overseas jobs in the name of the families they loved found the gold mine they were looking for, some also lost their families in the bargain, as relationships and values crumbled with the distance that turned OFWs into strangers and mere cash machines.
(2nd of three parts)
INFIDELITY, drugs and other social problems plague OFW families
AFTER years away from home, an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) returned to the Philippines to find his wife pregnant by the family driver.
Furious, he fired the driver but tried to save the marriage.
"Matod Pa Sa Lola ni Noy Kulas." Join the story-writing contest on Cebuano folklore and win prizes.
Thus did Fr. Ulyses Desales describe the dark side of local unemployment: the forced separation of spouses for long stretches of time straining relationships, as breadwinners take jobs oceans away.
Desales, port chaplain of Apostleship of the Sea (AOS)-Cebu, considers “illicit affairs on both sides” as among the three common problems of OFWs, along with work injuries and financial mismanagement of the OFWs’ earnings.
An arm of the Archdiocese of Cebu, AOS-Cebu reaches out to seafarers through legal and family counseling. It also does values and conscience formation for seafarers’ families.
Unfaithful
Desales estimated that some 30-40 percent of seamen are unfaithful to their spouses, down from 60 percent just three years ago, he said, as seamen “became more professional and started to love their work” and AOS accommodated seafarers’ requests for masses aboard vessels.
Gerry Gonzales, Visayas regional coordinator of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (CBCP-Ecmi), said some nurses working abroad also find that their husbands in the Philippines have cheated on them, or worse, already have other families of their own.
Asked why the husbands don’t join their wives abroad when it is relatively easy for nurses to bring their families with them to their overseas postings, Gonzales said the husbands don’t want to go because they have an easy life in the Philippines, not working and just living on the dollars their wives send them.
Locals have a term for such men, “HRD” or “Husband Receiving Dollars.”
Poverty
Studies by the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) show that poverty is the main reason why people migrate, followed by unemployment.
In 2006, the daily expenditure was P681 for a family of five in Metro Manila, but the daily minimum wage was only P325, said the CFO.
Today, about 40 percent of Filipino families are migrant-related, 68 percent of which have one parent absent, and 32 percent having both parents absent.
The numbers are unnerving, as parental absence forces children of OFWs to seek direction in life from other sources, such as their extended family or the environment.
If the father is abroad, CFO data show, the influence of the extended family and the environment on the child of the OFW is 39 percent. This rises to 62 percent if it is the mother who is abroad, and to 84 percent if both parents are abroad.
Suffer the children
The effects on families have been devastating.
For every 10 families with OFWs, Desales estimates, some six to seven will have problems with their children, usually with the boys in the family.
These problems include children not listening to the parents and not taking their schooling seriously because they have much money to spend (from the remittances of their parents) or because there was no one to supervise them in their studies.
Desales said drug taking was a familiar problem with male children.
“Drug lords target the children of seafarers” as a market, knowing they have cash, he said.
CBCP-Ecmi’s Gonzales also said some girls get pregnant while still in high school.
Incest
But what is worse is the problem of incest between the fathers and daughters left behind by a rising number of Filipino mothers working abroad, said the nongovernment organization (NGO) Kanlungan Center in a national report.
A representative of a local NGO working with OFWs’ families in the Visayas said there are five cases of incest in Bohol.
“I heard it’s here in Cebu also, but it’s kept hidden,” said the representative, who requested anonymity.
Organizing families
The CBCP-Ecmi tries to help OFWs and their families in whatever way it can, even up to coordinating to provide paralegal services if needed.
But mainly, it organizes spouses of OFWs into groups for better information dissemination of OFW updates and training, including livelihood skills training. It also helps families understand migration realities so they can better deal with them.
There was an educational campaign in Cebu public schools and Catholic schools from 2002 to 2004 explaining to the children of OFWs why their parents had to work abroad and teaching them to save money.
Actually, Gonzales said, the children already know why their parents left, but they still ask why.
“They say they don’t need money but their presence,” he said.
So for those seeking a better life abroad, a caveat: For while many Filipinos who took overseas jobs in the name of the families they loved found the gold mine they were looking for, some also lost their families in the bargain, as relationships and values crumbled with the distance that turned OFWs into strangers and mere cash machines.
Filipinos in California health jobs in peril
Nicholas von Wettberg
INQUIRER.net
CALIFORNIA, United States—As California leaders, led by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, desperately search for ways to balance a budget that is mired in a $24.3-billion deficit, state care homeowners brace themselves for a proposed cut of $3 billion in health services.
The cuts have the potential to devastate an industry that is deeply rooted in the Filipino community, and to jeopardize not only the future of care providers (owners of facilities), but also more important, the lives of elderly patients and those with disabilities.
“Where will these people go?” asked Lani Escueta, a Filipino-American care provider with three adult residential facilities in Hayward. “They are always the last to receive whatever the government has to offer. They don’t have anybody…we are their family.”
A number of Filipino-owned care homes in the Bay Area will be affected directly by the cuts as they attempt to reduce their own budgets, especially in regards to employee salaries and benefits.
“We provide employment to those who lost their jobs in the real estate and automobile industry and those who are new immigrants, who are mostly Filipinos…like how I got started as a caregiver…or minorities who can't find better jobs somewhere else,” said Fil-Am Nimfa Gamez, an East Bay care provider, in an e-mail to FilAm Star. “So cutting their salaries and benefits will mean cutting their source of income that will definitely impact the quality of their living.”
The quality of care provided to those in need stands to take a big hit, as providers would have a difficult time staying competitive without using qualified employees.
“Who would want to work for less but with more difficult responsibilities?” asked Gamez, who provides residential and day-care programs for developmentally disabled adults and seniors. “We are bound to close our residential care facilities and day programs if we will not earn enough to pay our mortgages and our staff’s salaries.”
Gamez roughly estimates that 80 percent of care providers in the Bay Area and Los Angeles are Filipino.
Even with the “limited options” that legislators have in reducing state spending, the “across the board” cuts in health services would only cause programs to become less effective and punish California’s low-income residents and the sick.
“It’s not fair, but we are in this job…we love our clients,” said Escueta. “There is already a bond there because they moved into our home. It would be really sad on both ends. We don’t know what will happen but we’re just keeping our fingers crossed.”
Many of the care homes receiving assistance from the state—whether through funding, referrals, or quality control—help patients avoid the need to be placed in nursing homes. Eliminating programs, such as the Adult Day Health Care, would only be a temporary stopgap measure, as the projected savings are eventually shouldered by the high cost of placing those same patients (20 percent of the program’s 38,000 recipients) in a nursing home.
Both Escueta and Gamez say a major resource of the Department of Social Services that is on the chopping block is the Regional Center of the East Bay (for Alameda and Contra Costa County), of which there are 21 located throughout the state. The non-profit agency handles the care homes’ Purchase of Service (POS) for the state’s Department of Developmental Disability (the money given to the care homes), which was cut by 3 percent in February and is slated for another 7-percent cut this September.
The state is also proposing to slash the amount of regional center service coordinators per case load.
“So we, the care providers, are doing our share—by attending rallies and meetings with local legislators—to make the governor fully realize the situation,” said Escueta, who started her first care home for people with developmental disabilities in 2002.
Gamez, who has a seat on the board of directors of the San Francisco Phil-American Chamber of Commerce and is the vice president for the Federation of Philippine-American Chambers of Commerce, expressed some concern over the lack of Filipino involvement.
“A majority of employees and care providers are Filipinos, yet only a few are actively participating in rallies,” said Gamez, who specializes in the field of the developmentally disabled.
Because of that void, and the current budget cuts, Gamez has organized Filipino care providers and formed the United Association of California Care providers (UACC).
“We are strengthened by our obligations to our client,” said Escueta, the chief planning officer for the UACC.
INQUIRER.net
CALIFORNIA, United States—As California leaders, led by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, desperately search for ways to balance a budget that is mired in a $24.3-billion deficit, state care homeowners brace themselves for a proposed cut of $3 billion in health services.
The cuts have the potential to devastate an industry that is deeply rooted in the Filipino community, and to jeopardize not only the future of care providers (owners of facilities), but also more important, the lives of elderly patients and those with disabilities.
“Where will these people go?” asked Lani Escueta, a Filipino-American care provider with three adult residential facilities in Hayward. “They are always the last to receive whatever the government has to offer. They don’t have anybody…we are their family.”
A number of Filipino-owned care homes in the Bay Area will be affected directly by the cuts as they attempt to reduce their own budgets, especially in regards to employee salaries and benefits.
“We provide employment to those who lost their jobs in the real estate and automobile industry and those who are new immigrants, who are mostly Filipinos…like how I got started as a caregiver…or minorities who can't find better jobs somewhere else,” said Fil-Am Nimfa Gamez, an East Bay care provider, in an e-mail to FilAm Star. “So cutting their salaries and benefits will mean cutting their source of income that will definitely impact the quality of their living.”
The quality of care provided to those in need stands to take a big hit, as providers would have a difficult time staying competitive without using qualified employees.
“Who would want to work for less but with more difficult responsibilities?” asked Gamez, who provides residential and day-care programs for developmentally disabled adults and seniors. “We are bound to close our residential care facilities and day programs if we will not earn enough to pay our mortgages and our staff’s salaries.”
Gamez roughly estimates that 80 percent of care providers in the Bay Area and Los Angeles are Filipino.
Even with the “limited options” that legislators have in reducing state spending, the “across the board” cuts in health services would only cause programs to become less effective and punish California’s low-income residents and the sick.
“It’s not fair, but we are in this job…we love our clients,” said Escueta. “There is already a bond there because they moved into our home. It would be really sad on both ends. We don’t know what will happen but we’re just keeping our fingers crossed.”
Many of the care homes receiving assistance from the state—whether through funding, referrals, or quality control—help patients avoid the need to be placed in nursing homes. Eliminating programs, such as the Adult Day Health Care, would only be a temporary stopgap measure, as the projected savings are eventually shouldered by the high cost of placing those same patients (20 percent of the program’s 38,000 recipients) in a nursing home.
Both Escueta and Gamez say a major resource of the Department of Social Services that is on the chopping block is the Regional Center of the East Bay (for Alameda and Contra Costa County), of which there are 21 located throughout the state. The non-profit agency handles the care homes’ Purchase of Service (POS) for the state’s Department of Developmental Disability (the money given to the care homes), which was cut by 3 percent in February and is slated for another 7-percent cut this September.
The state is also proposing to slash the amount of regional center service coordinators per case load.
“So we, the care providers, are doing our share—by attending rallies and meetings with local legislators—to make the governor fully realize the situation,” said Escueta, who started her first care home for people with developmental disabilities in 2002.
Gamez, who has a seat on the board of directors of the San Francisco Phil-American Chamber of Commerce and is the vice president for the Federation of Philippine-American Chambers of Commerce, expressed some concern over the lack of Filipino involvement.
“A majority of employees and care providers are Filipinos, yet only a few are actively participating in rallies,” said Gamez, who specializes in the field of the developmentally disabled.
Because of that void, and the current budget cuts, Gamez has organized Filipino care providers and formed the United Association of California Care providers (UACC).
“We are strengthened by our obligations to our client,” said Escueta, the chief planning officer for the UACC.
More Filipino teachers off to jobs abroad
By Philip Tubeza
MANILA, Philippines—The exodus of Filipino teachers to other countries is expected to continue in the coming years, according to a labor group.
The Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK) said on Wednesday two places were the likely magnets for Filipino teachers—the United States, which would need two million teachers in the coming decade, and Arab countries, which would need at least 450,000 teachers.
The group said teacher shortages, growing populations, and expanding educational systems in many other countries coupled with the dismal work conditions and salaries at home could push local teachers to go abroad.
“Demand for teachers across the United States continues to remain high even if the North American country’s economy is in a deep recession,” said Annie Enriquez-Geron, PSLINK general secretary.
“There are estimates that the United States will need to employ an additional two million teachers in the coming decade to maintain its current educational standards and closer to three million if it strives to improve them in order to stay globally competitive," she added.
Geron said more than 10,000 foreign teachers are recruited by the United States every year to fill its demand.
“There is also very high demand for new science and math teachers in the US with estimates by the Business-Higher Education Forum in Washington putting the figure at 200,000 at the least," she added.
In the last 10 years, around 4,000 Filipino teachers—mostly math, science, English, and special education teachers—left the country. This figure included only new hires for teaching jobs and did not include those who left the country for work other than teaching, the paper said.
The top destinations were the United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, the paper added.
According to a UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco) study, Geron said, the Arab states will face “the greatest teacher shortage in the drive to provide every child with a primary education by 2015 as the region will need to raise the current stock by 26 percent and create another 450,000 teaching posts in less than a decade.”
“As more developed countries face a graying workforce, they are increasingly resorting to the recruitment of skilled teachers from less developed countries. This phenomenon had already been foreseen by (European) countries since the ’90s, warning that aging teaching forces may eventually lead to shortages,” Geron said.
“For instance, more than 60 percent of all primary teachers are over 40 years of age in Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands; and more than 40 percent are over 50 years old in Germany and Sweden,” she said.
Geron said another factor contributing to teacher shortages in more developed countries was the declining interest of their nationals in entering the teaching profession.
According to a survey conducted by the temporary staffing agency Manpower Inc., teaching is the second hardest job to fill in the US. Many of their nationals, the study said, would rather pursue other more financially rewarding careers than become a teacher. Low salary and unattractive working conditions were often cited as reasons not to enter the teaching profession, Geron said. (But for a teacher from a developing nation, salaries would still be significantly more than what they earn at home.)
“Unfortunately, instead of addressing employment conditions of the teaching sector, governments of more developed countries are finding it more convenient and economical to recruit migrant workers, many of whom are offered lower pay and contractual jobs that deprived them of their due benefits,” she added.
Geron said the dependence on migrant skilled teachers in developed countries was leading to aggressive recruitment strategies by their governments, recruitment agencies, and the private schools themselves.
“There have even been governments which have created special agencies just to recruit teachers from other countries. Private teacher recruitment agencies in the United Kingdom have mushroomed to more than 100 while there are more or less 70 in the United States,” she added.
MANILA, Philippines—The exodus of Filipino teachers to other countries is expected to continue in the coming years, according to a labor group.
The Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK) said on Wednesday two places were the likely magnets for Filipino teachers—the United States, which would need two million teachers in the coming decade, and Arab countries, which would need at least 450,000 teachers.
The group said teacher shortages, growing populations, and expanding educational systems in many other countries coupled with the dismal work conditions and salaries at home could push local teachers to go abroad.
“Demand for teachers across the United States continues to remain high even if the North American country’s economy is in a deep recession,” said Annie Enriquez-Geron, PSLINK general secretary.
“There are estimates that the United States will need to employ an additional two million teachers in the coming decade to maintain its current educational standards and closer to three million if it strives to improve them in order to stay globally competitive," she added.
Geron said more than 10,000 foreign teachers are recruited by the United States every year to fill its demand.
“There is also very high demand for new science and math teachers in the US with estimates by the Business-Higher Education Forum in Washington putting the figure at 200,000 at the least," she added.
In the last 10 years, around 4,000 Filipino teachers—mostly math, science, English, and special education teachers—left the country. This figure included only new hires for teaching jobs and did not include those who left the country for work other than teaching, the paper said.
The top destinations were the United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, the paper added.
According to a UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco) study, Geron said, the Arab states will face “the greatest teacher shortage in the drive to provide every child with a primary education by 2015 as the region will need to raise the current stock by 26 percent and create another 450,000 teaching posts in less than a decade.”
“As more developed countries face a graying workforce, they are increasingly resorting to the recruitment of skilled teachers from less developed countries. This phenomenon had already been foreseen by (European) countries since the ’90s, warning that aging teaching forces may eventually lead to shortages,” Geron said.
“For instance, more than 60 percent of all primary teachers are over 40 years of age in Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands; and more than 40 percent are over 50 years old in Germany and Sweden,” she said.
Geron said another factor contributing to teacher shortages in more developed countries was the declining interest of their nationals in entering the teaching profession.
According to a survey conducted by the temporary staffing agency Manpower Inc., teaching is the second hardest job to fill in the US. Many of their nationals, the study said, would rather pursue other more financially rewarding careers than become a teacher. Low salary and unattractive working conditions were often cited as reasons not to enter the teaching profession, Geron said. (But for a teacher from a developing nation, salaries would still be significantly more than what they earn at home.)
“Unfortunately, instead of addressing employment conditions of the teaching sector, governments of more developed countries are finding it more convenient and economical to recruit migrant workers, many of whom are offered lower pay and contractual jobs that deprived them of their due benefits,” she added.
Geron said the dependence on migrant skilled teachers in developed countries was leading to aggressive recruitment strategies by their governments, recruitment agencies, and the private schools themselves.
“There have even been governments which have created special agencies just to recruit teachers from other countries. Private teacher recruitment agencies in the United Kingdom have mushroomed to more than 100 while there are more or less 70 in the United States,” she added.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
When the text messages stop coming, so does the money
OVERSEAS Filipino workers (OFW) complain about a lot of things: maltreatment, non-payment of wages and contract violations, among others.
But the top complaint received by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa) is the non-remittance of financial support by OFWs to their families.
This made up more than one-third or 240 of the cases the Owwa 7 received from Jan. 1, 2006 to June 30, 2008.
On the surface, the problem is non-remittance, said Owwa 7 Officer-in-Charge Mae Codilla. But usually this is a manifestation of other “hidden problems,” like a conflict in the relationship of the couple, or the OFW having vices or another family already.
When the OFWs stop responding to their text messages, the wives troop to the Owwa 7 for help in locating their “missing” husbands.
Contact tracing
“Some families don’t know the complete address of their loved ones—or even their employers’ company addresses,” Codilla said, so Owwa 7 does the tracing of the OFWs’ whereabouts for them.
It then sends a letter to the OFW reminding him to send financial support to his family.
Only half of the OFWs respond, she said, some by promising to resume support, others by explaining the reason for their non-remittance, such as that an annulment had already been filed.
Through its network of chaplains, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (CBCP-Ecmi) also helps wives locate OFW husbands who have stopped communicating with them.
CBCP-Ecmi Visayas Regional Coordinator Gerry Gonzales said one wife, for instance, learned that her husband working in the United States had already shacked up with an American woman, so she sought his help to locate her husband to ensure that he would at least continue to support their children.
The nongovernment organization Lihok Pilipina has also helped seamen’s wives, 20 of them from July 2008 to May 2009 alone, on similar cases.
Lihok assists by calling the maritime agency to find out when the seaman’s ship will dock. Sometimes, it finds that the seaman has long returned to the Philippines and been playing house with someone else.
Enforcing the law
At the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) 7, where Cebu City Councilor Gerardo Carillo gives legal counseling on Thursdays to those in need, including spouses looking for OFWs, Carillo said he mediates so the couple can come to an agreement.
“Under the law, husband and wife are supposed to extend support to each other and to their children,” Carillo said. “If the marriage is still existing, the wife can file for support for herself and her children. Otherwise, only the children can be given support.”
Enter the in-laws
When in-laws get into the picture, things get uglier. The DSWD 7 and Lihok Pilipina have seen cases where parents of an OFW report to the OFW that his wife is having an affair, even if this isn’t true.
They do this so the OFW will fight with his wife, or at least stop sending her money, which would have the effect of restoring
to the original level the remittances the parents used to get from the OFW before his wife came along.
Some couples eventually file for annulment or separation of properties, Carillo said.
In 2002, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of migrants Gabriela Rodríguez Pizarro said the rate of separation among Filipino migrant women was “4.4 times higher than the national average.” CTL (Tomorrow: Rich dad, poor dad/From remittances to revenues)
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
OFW money fails to bridge income inequality
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 12:50:00 03/28/2008
Filed Under: Overseas Employment, Poverty, Remittances
MAKATI CITY – EXTREME reliance on money from Filipinos overseas hasn’t helped the country get out of the poverty rut and may even hobble the poor’s income capability, says an economist.
Using government’s triennial Family Income and Expenditures Survey (FIES), University of the Philippines economist Ernesto Pernia said in a research that remittances from overseas Filipino workers may even be contributing to the persistence of high inequality in the country.
The 2003 and 2006 datasets of the FIES saw the total measure of inequality of wealth called ‘Gini coefficient’ hardly changing: 0.4605 Gini coefficient in 2003 and 0.4580 in 2006.
As overseas employment and permanent settlement continue to persist, Pernia said remittances “could result to a further worsening of income inequality…”
“Such inequality tends to dampen the poverty reduction effect of remittances—FIES reveals that poverty incidence rose to 32.9 percent in 2006 from 30 percent in 2003.” The poverty incidence figure reflects that percentage of the population that is considered poor.
The recently-released 2006 FIES showed there were 27.6 million poor Filipinos, some 3.6 million more than the survey’s last conduct in 2003. This means the number of Filipinos who said they were poor increased to 700,000 or a total of 4.7 million poor families in 2006.
In a press conference early March, socio-economic planning secretary Augusto Santos declined to link remittances and income gap between the “haves” and have-nots.” He said he wants to the 2009 FIES done first before citing effects of remittances to poverty and inequality.
But Pernia, using data on the FIES covering the years 1994, 1997, 2000, and 2003, noted that while remittances expanded household incomes, the gain is smaller for the lower quintile groups (21.5 percent) compared to the upper quintile group (46.3 percent).
“Despite their beneficial effects, remittances cannot be relied on as a principal instrument for reducing poverty or fostering the country’s long-run development,” he said in his paper titled “Migration, Remittances, Poverty, and Inequality.”
Benefits
Of course, Pernia said, benefits of OFW remittances to purses of Filipinos cannot be discounted. His data analyses reveal that remittances have positive and significant effects on the well-being of poor households, particularly the two lowest income quintiles of the poor.
If the first poorest income quintile group increases remittance receipts by P1,000 per capita, it leads to P1,789 additional annual family spending per person.
Meanwhile, for the second poorest income quintile group, the household expenditure per capita rises to P2,177 for every P1,000 additional per capita remittance.
Pernia says, the positive effect on remittances on all these households’ well-being rises to the point that remittances “become insignificant for the next higher quintiles,” and these “probably matter less to richer families.”
“The positive effect of remittances on household incomes rises monotonically from 1 percent for the lowest quintile, 4.8 percent for middle quintile, and 16 percent for the top quintile,” Pernia said.
Without remittances, the Philippines would have more than 26.5 million poor. Thanks to remittances, the poverty headcount is lower at 24 million, Pernia’s data found.
Having remittances as a share in a household’s income “raises the likelihood (that a) household will get out of poverty,” Pernia said.
“Poverty incidence for the bottom quintile was slightly reduced by 0.1 percent, and by 13 percent for the second quintile, while that in all three upper quintiles were completely wiped out,” he added.
Aside from the FIES data, Pernia also processed information from the annual Survey on Overseas Filipinos, and the quarterly Labor Force Survey of the National Statistics Office. He also used gross regional domestic product data from the national income accounts to see the regional development impact of remittances.
A Gap
Regions that have more overseas workers benefit more from remittances compared to other regions that have fewer OFWs, Pernia said.
Remittances have brought positive and significant effects on poverty reduction in the regions – to the point that a 10 percent increase in the ratio of remittance per capita to gross regional domestic product (GRDP) per capita sees a 2.6-percent increase of households lifted out of poverty, Pernia said.
Ironically, these benefits of remittances to regional development “do not matter to the worst-off as much as the better-off.” Pernia found that regional development does not benefit low-income household as much as it does higher income families.
Six of the country’s ten poorest provinces are in the Mindanao island group, while provinces with the lowest poverty incidence rates were in Luzon, FIES data showed. Data also showed that poverty rates in the regions increased, and that provincial poverty measures also highlighted regional income disparities.
Pernia conjectured that had Filipinos stayed to work within the country’s borders, domestic remittances appeared to be “more welfare-enhancing for the poor than are international remittances.” Remittances are good for the poor, “but even better for the less poor and better-off,” he reiterated.
But socio-economic planning secretary Augusto Santos emphasized during the press briefing that at least the 32.9-percent poverty incidence rate in 2006 is lower than 33 percent rate in the year 2000.
The number of individual Filipinos who are poor may be lower in 2006 (26.9 million) compared to year 2000 figures (27.5 million). Still, FIES data showed that the number of Filipino families who are poor rose to 4.7 million in 2006 from 4.2 million in 2000.
The increase is glaring because the country posted consistent higher GDP rates, fueled by consumption in turn powered by remittances.
Santos said the country’s GDP growth and improved fiscal condition “provided us enough breathing space to spend more on social services in the years ahead.”
He added that the rise of poverty incidence is “an income distribution issue,” even while the Philippines
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 12:50:00 03/28/2008
Filed Under: Overseas Employment, Poverty, Remittances
MAKATI CITY – EXTREME reliance on money from Filipinos overseas hasn’t helped the country get out of the poverty rut and may even hobble the poor’s income capability, says an economist.
Using government’s triennial Family Income and Expenditures Survey (FIES), University of the Philippines economist Ernesto Pernia said in a research that remittances from overseas Filipino workers may even be contributing to the persistence of high inequality in the country.
The 2003 and 2006 datasets of the FIES saw the total measure of inequality of wealth called ‘Gini coefficient’ hardly changing: 0.4605 Gini coefficient in 2003 and 0.4580 in 2006.
As overseas employment and permanent settlement continue to persist, Pernia said remittances “could result to a further worsening of income inequality…”
“Such inequality tends to dampen the poverty reduction effect of remittances—FIES reveals that poverty incidence rose to 32.9 percent in 2006 from 30 percent in 2003.” The poverty incidence figure reflects that percentage of the population that is considered poor.
The recently-released 2006 FIES showed there were 27.6 million poor Filipinos, some 3.6 million more than the survey’s last conduct in 2003. This means the number of Filipinos who said they were poor increased to 700,000 or a total of 4.7 million poor families in 2006.
In a press conference early March, socio-economic planning secretary Augusto Santos declined to link remittances and income gap between the “haves” and have-nots.” He said he wants to the 2009 FIES done first before citing effects of remittances to poverty and inequality.
But Pernia, using data on the FIES covering the years 1994, 1997, 2000, and 2003, noted that while remittances expanded household incomes, the gain is smaller for the lower quintile groups (21.5 percent) compared to the upper quintile group (46.3 percent).
“Despite their beneficial effects, remittances cannot be relied on as a principal instrument for reducing poverty or fostering the country’s long-run development,” he said in his paper titled “Migration, Remittances, Poverty, and Inequality.”
Benefits
Of course, Pernia said, benefits of OFW remittances to purses of Filipinos cannot be discounted. His data analyses reveal that remittances have positive and significant effects on the well-being of poor households, particularly the two lowest income quintiles of the poor.
If the first poorest income quintile group increases remittance receipts by P1,000 per capita, it leads to P1,789 additional annual family spending per person.
Meanwhile, for the second poorest income quintile group, the household expenditure per capita rises to P2,177 for every P1,000 additional per capita remittance.
Pernia says, the positive effect on remittances on all these households’ well-being rises to the point that remittances “become insignificant for the next higher quintiles,” and these “probably matter less to richer families.”
“The positive effect of remittances on household incomes rises monotonically from 1 percent for the lowest quintile, 4.8 percent for middle quintile, and 16 percent for the top quintile,” Pernia said.
Without remittances, the Philippines would have more than 26.5 million poor. Thanks to remittances, the poverty headcount is lower at 24 million, Pernia’s data found.
Having remittances as a share in a household’s income “raises the likelihood (that a) household will get out of poverty,” Pernia said.
“Poverty incidence for the bottom quintile was slightly reduced by 0.1 percent, and by 13 percent for the second quintile, while that in all three upper quintiles were completely wiped out,” he added.
Aside from the FIES data, Pernia also processed information from the annual Survey on Overseas Filipinos, and the quarterly Labor Force Survey of the National Statistics Office. He also used gross regional domestic product data from the national income accounts to see the regional development impact of remittances.
A Gap
Regions that have more overseas workers benefit more from remittances compared to other regions that have fewer OFWs, Pernia said.
Remittances have brought positive and significant effects on poverty reduction in the regions – to the point that a 10 percent increase in the ratio of remittance per capita to gross regional domestic product (GRDP) per capita sees a 2.6-percent increase of households lifted out of poverty, Pernia said.
Ironically, these benefits of remittances to regional development “do not matter to the worst-off as much as the better-off.” Pernia found that regional development does not benefit low-income household as much as it does higher income families.
Six of the country’s ten poorest provinces are in the Mindanao island group, while provinces with the lowest poverty incidence rates were in Luzon, FIES data showed. Data also showed that poverty rates in the regions increased, and that provincial poverty measures also highlighted regional income disparities.
Pernia conjectured that had Filipinos stayed to work within the country’s borders, domestic remittances appeared to be “more welfare-enhancing for the poor than are international remittances.” Remittances are good for the poor, “but even better for the less poor and better-off,” he reiterated.
But socio-economic planning secretary Augusto Santos emphasized during the press briefing that at least the 32.9-percent poverty incidence rate in 2006 is lower than 33 percent rate in the year 2000.
The number of individual Filipinos who are poor may be lower in 2006 (26.9 million) compared to year 2000 figures (27.5 million). Still, FIES data showed that the number of Filipino families who are poor rose to 4.7 million in 2006 from 4.2 million in 2000.
The increase is glaring because the country posted consistent higher GDP rates, fueled by consumption in turn powered by remittances.
Santos said the country’s GDP growth and improved fiscal condition “provided us enough breathing space to spend more on social services in the years ahead.”
He added that the rise of poverty incidence is “an income distribution issue,” even while the Philippines
Closing the loophole of ‘backdoor’ exits
By Rasheed Abou-Alsamh
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 02:05:00 03/29/2008
The uproar in the Philippines by the militant workers’ group Migrante over the 117 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who recently ran away from their employers and ended up living under a bridge in the Kandara district of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is a case of misplaced anger.
This anger comes from the frustration of the runaway workers at the slowness of the deportation process from Saudi Arabia, and from the misplaced notion in the Philippines that runaway workers can just board a plane in Saudi and end up in Manila. It’s not that easy.
All foreigners in the kingdom need a work visa to enter the country and they also need exit visas every time they leave the country. The Philippine Consulate in Jeddah does not have a magic wand that it can use to get the Saudi authorities to allow the en-masse departure of 117 runaway workers just like that.
First, the authorities have to contact the sponsors of each of the workers to ask them what went wrong and to find out if the workers are owed money or if the employer claims that the workers still have outstanding obligations. This cannot be done overnight, and sometimes takes weeks. The police also check that none of the workers are wanted for a crime. In the meantime, the consulate hands over these individuals to the Saudi authorities who place them in the deportation center in Jeddah.
I agree with Migrante that the deportation center is dirty, overcrowded and has terrible food. I know, because I’ve visited Filipinos there more than once. The Saudi National Society for Human Rights has visited the center and wrote a report to the government about the facility.
Migrante’s call for the recall of Philippine Ambassador Antonio Villamor and Consul General Ezzedin Tago for their alleged failure to get these 117 OFWs home quickly is absurd. Both the ambassador and Tago have to follow the law of the land and cannot just pressure the Saudi authorities to allow these OFWs to leave post-haste. And the call for President Arroyo to appeal directly to King Abdullah for help in getting the workers repatriated, won’t work either.
It won’t work because there are one million Filipinos living and working in Saudi Arabia, the single largest concentration of OFWs, except for Filipinos living in the US. On her last visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2006, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo secured the release of 138 jailed Filipinos after she appealed directly to the king during private meetings. Migrante cannot expect the president to pick up the phone and call the king every time a group of OFWs decides to seek exit from the country via the infamous “backdoor” of Jeddah.
Fixers at the Philippine Consulate have long promised to help get runaway OFWs out of the country without going through the regular immigration channels if they paid them a handsome fee. Exploiting a loophole in Saudi immigration law, the fixers would issue temporary papers to fleeing OFWs stating that they were Muslim pilgrims who had overstayed their visas and lost their original passports.
For a while this worked, although Christian OFWs who used this back door lived in fear that they would be discovered by Saudi police in deportation if they failed to know how to pray. But Saudi authorities soon caught on to this practice, and the business for fixers soon began to shrink.
The Philippine Consulate has repeatedly warned OFWs in the kingdom not to believe the claims of fixers, stressing that the backdoor exit did not exist. For Migrante now to accuse them of not breaking Saudi law to help runaway workers is absurd.
This is not to downplay the amount of abuse that many OFWs have to face regularly, from delayed salaries, contract substitution and sometimes the threat of assault. But as Philippine diplomats stress all the time, running away from your employer should be the very last resort. Filing complaints with the embassy and labor court should be the first step in disputes.
The Philippine government sent $36,000 to the consulate in Jeddah to help pay for the tickets of the 117 OFWs to fly them home, and the consulate said it was providing food for them on a daily basis. Some were too impatient to wait for those tickets, and ended up buying their own tickets to get home faster. They complained upon landing in Manila that they were “forced” to buy their own tickets. Somehow I doubt that. If they had waited, the Philippine government would have picked up the tab.
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 02:05:00 03/29/2008
The uproar in the Philippines by the militant workers’ group Migrante over the 117 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who recently ran away from their employers and ended up living under a bridge in the Kandara district of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is a case of misplaced anger.
This anger comes from the frustration of the runaway workers at the slowness of the deportation process from Saudi Arabia, and from the misplaced notion in the Philippines that runaway workers can just board a plane in Saudi and end up in Manila. It’s not that easy.
All foreigners in the kingdom need a work visa to enter the country and they also need exit visas every time they leave the country. The Philippine Consulate in Jeddah does not have a magic wand that it can use to get the Saudi authorities to allow the en-masse departure of 117 runaway workers just like that.
First, the authorities have to contact the sponsors of each of the workers to ask them what went wrong and to find out if the workers are owed money or if the employer claims that the workers still have outstanding obligations. This cannot be done overnight, and sometimes takes weeks. The police also check that none of the workers are wanted for a crime. In the meantime, the consulate hands over these individuals to the Saudi authorities who place them in the deportation center in Jeddah.
I agree with Migrante that the deportation center is dirty, overcrowded and has terrible food. I know, because I’ve visited Filipinos there more than once. The Saudi National Society for Human Rights has visited the center and wrote a report to the government about the facility.
Migrante’s call for the recall of Philippine Ambassador Antonio Villamor and Consul General Ezzedin Tago for their alleged failure to get these 117 OFWs home quickly is absurd. Both the ambassador and Tago have to follow the law of the land and cannot just pressure the Saudi authorities to allow these OFWs to leave post-haste. And the call for President Arroyo to appeal directly to King Abdullah for help in getting the workers repatriated, won’t work either.
It won’t work because there are one million Filipinos living and working in Saudi Arabia, the single largest concentration of OFWs, except for Filipinos living in the US. On her last visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2006, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo secured the release of 138 jailed Filipinos after she appealed directly to the king during private meetings. Migrante cannot expect the president to pick up the phone and call the king every time a group of OFWs decides to seek exit from the country via the infamous “backdoor” of Jeddah.
Fixers at the Philippine Consulate have long promised to help get runaway OFWs out of the country without going through the regular immigration channels if they paid them a handsome fee. Exploiting a loophole in Saudi immigration law, the fixers would issue temporary papers to fleeing OFWs stating that they were Muslim pilgrims who had overstayed their visas and lost their original passports.
For a while this worked, although Christian OFWs who used this back door lived in fear that they would be discovered by Saudi police in deportation if they failed to know how to pray. But Saudi authorities soon caught on to this practice, and the business for fixers soon began to shrink.
The Philippine Consulate has repeatedly warned OFWs in the kingdom not to believe the claims of fixers, stressing that the backdoor exit did not exist. For Migrante now to accuse them of not breaking Saudi law to help runaway workers is absurd.
This is not to downplay the amount of abuse that many OFWs have to face regularly, from delayed salaries, contract substitution and sometimes the threat of assault. But as Philippine diplomats stress all the time, running away from your employer should be the very last resort. Filing complaints with the embassy and labor court should be the first step in disputes.
The Philippine government sent $36,000 to the consulate in Jeddah to help pay for the tickets of the 117 OFWs to fly them home, and the consulate said it was providing food for them on a daily basis. Some were too impatient to wait for those tickets, and ended up buying their own tickets to get home faster. They complained upon landing in Manila that they were “forced” to buy their own tickets. Somehow I doubt that. If they had waited, the Philippine government would have picked up the tab.
Introduction: Milestone or millstone?global crisis
By Cherry T. Lim
(First of Three Parts)
IN 2006, the Philippines “celebrated” a milestone when it breached the one-million mark with the deployment of 1,062,567 Filipino workers to more than 180 countries.
Now the country wants to break through the 200-country barrier.
"Matod Pa Sa Lola ni Noy Kulas." Join the story-writing contest on Cebuano folklore and win prizes.
To this end, President Gloria Arroyo’s Administrative Order 247 last December directed the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) “to execute a paradigm shift” from regulating the private sector’s overseas placement of workers, to going “full-blast” in exploring new job markets itself. POEA was tasked to “aggressively deploy” Filipinos abroad.
This came amid fears that overseas Filipino workers (OFW) would be displaced after the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States quickly became a global crisis.
The United States is where 32 percent of the more than 8.7 million overseas Filipinos live and work.
Abuse
But the civil society network Philippine Migrants Rights Watch says AO 247 will only subject more Filipinos to external conditions, over which the government has little
control. It called on Arroyo to strengthen the local economy instead so there will be enough local jobs for all Filipinos.
But this will take time, and the citizens are baying for jobs—now. And definitely there are not enough local jobs.
The National Statistics Office said 2.85 million Filipinos were jobless in January. So what’s a President to do?
Hunger
In 2000, the Philippines reaffirmed its commitment to meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) which, among others, involve halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people suffering from hunger, and achieving “full and productive employment and decent work for all.”
Six years from the deadline, the Philippines seems to have made gains.
Poverty incidence fell to 30 percent of the population in 2003 from 45.3 percent in 1990, according to the Philippine report on meeting the MDGs.
But even if the government were to hit its poverty reduction target of 22.65 percent in 2015, that is still a lot of poor Filipinos.
Full, or even decent, employment remains a dream for many.
More females leaving
The report said 72 percent of newly hired OFWs in 2005 were women, “indicating a lack of opportunities locally for decent work and livelihood.”
And with the average cash remittances of women only 60 percent that of men, this indicated that female OFWs were “in lesser skilled and often unprotected lower-paying jobs,” making them vulnerable to abuse.
Poverty reduction requires jobs, but what if the jobs are overseas?
In this three-part special report, Sun.Star Cebu examines the costs, challenges and benefits of sending Filipino workers overseas amid the global economic crunch and the continuing social cost of deployment.
It also looks into government’s efforts to protect OFWs, the institutions that help OFWs and their families deal with migration realities, and the alternatives to migration for those seeking to give up the itinerant life for good.
(First of Three Parts)
IN 2006, the Philippines “celebrated” a milestone when it breached the one-million mark with the deployment of 1,062,567 Filipino workers to more than 180 countries.
Now the country wants to break through the 200-country barrier.
"Matod Pa Sa Lola ni Noy Kulas." Join the story-writing contest on Cebuano folklore and win prizes.
To this end, President Gloria Arroyo’s Administrative Order 247 last December directed the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) “to execute a paradigm shift” from regulating the private sector’s overseas placement of workers, to going “full-blast” in exploring new job markets itself. POEA was tasked to “aggressively deploy” Filipinos abroad.
This came amid fears that overseas Filipino workers (OFW) would be displaced after the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States quickly became a global crisis.
The United States is where 32 percent of the more than 8.7 million overseas Filipinos live and work.
Abuse
But the civil society network Philippine Migrants Rights Watch says AO 247 will only subject more Filipinos to external conditions, over which the government has little
control. It called on Arroyo to strengthen the local economy instead so there will be enough local jobs for all Filipinos.
But this will take time, and the citizens are baying for jobs—now. And definitely there are not enough local jobs.
The National Statistics Office said 2.85 million Filipinos were jobless in January. So what’s a President to do?
Hunger
In 2000, the Philippines reaffirmed its commitment to meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) which, among others, involve halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people suffering from hunger, and achieving “full and productive employment and decent work for all.”
Six years from the deadline, the Philippines seems to have made gains.
Poverty incidence fell to 30 percent of the population in 2003 from 45.3 percent in 1990, according to the Philippine report on meeting the MDGs.
But even if the government were to hit its poverty reduction target of 22.65 percent in 2015, that is still a lot of poor Filipinos.
Full, or even decent, employment remains a dream for many.
More females leaving
The report said 72 percent of newly hired OFWs in 2005 were women, “indicating a lack of opportunities locally for decent work and livelihood.”
And with the average cash remittances of women only 60 percent that of men, this indicated that female OFWs were “in lesser skilled and often unprotected lower-paying jobs,” making them vulnerable to abuse.
Poverty reduction requires jobs, but what if the jobs are overseas?
In this three-part special report, Sun.Star Cebu examines the costs, challenges and benefits of sending Filipino workers overseas amid the global economic crunch and the continuing social cost of deployment.
It also looks into government’s efforts to protect OFWs, the institutions that help OFWs and their families deal with migration realities, and the alternatives to migration for those seeking to give up the itinerant life for good.
From remittances to revenues
By Cherry T. Lim
Former OFW, seafarer’s wife find success in business
SOME 30 years ago, Loida Sandalo was receiving regular remittances from her husband, a messman working on a ship overseas.
But with Oliver earning just $100 a month, which at the exchange rate of P8 to the US dollar, meant just P800 a month, she was having problems making ends meet, especially with relatives—thinking all OFWs are rich—trooping to the house frequently to ask for money.
"Matod Pa Sa Lola ni Noy Kulas." Join the story-writing contest on Cebuano folklore and win prizes.
“I told him to learn to cook so that he could become chief cook one day,” Sandalo, now 55, told Sun.Star Cebu in the vernacular.
Oliver’s long-distance culinary education began with her enclosing recipes in the letters she sent him.
In five years, he made chief cook. But just the same, Loida decided to get into business because with five sons to support, “ako man maglabad og budget.” (I would be the one to have problems with the budget.)
She opened a canteen at the Mactan Economic Zone but stopped after the long hours became too much for her.
Security
Three years ago, on the suggestion of a friend, she put up a security agency in Barangay, Kalunasan, Cebu City with P50,000 in capital. Later, she took out a loan under the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa)-National Livelihood Support Fund Livelihood Development Program for Overseas Filipino Workers.
Jadds Investigation and Security Services Agency now employs 70 security guards and has branches in Tagbilaran and Tacloban cities. Its clients include Gaisano Mactan, Mactan Doctors Hospital, Evergreen Park, and a subdivision in Mactan.
Sideline
Despite the success of her security business, Loida has continued with her “sideline,” receiving orders for cakes and catering for wedding receptions, barangay meetings and other occasions.
Two of her sons help in the business. Two other sons are seamen like their father.
With plans to ultimately have more than 100 security guards, she got another loan from the Owwa last month.
Her fiscal discipline has borne fruit. Yet, she is still planning for the future—a time when her husband and sons won’t want to board ships anymore.
She has bought lots on which she is now building apartments for rent.
Like Sandalo, Kenneth Carredo believes Owwa’s loan program is a godsend with its rate of nine percent per annum a bargain compared to other sources of credit.
Carredo, 42, an OFW returnee, and his wife put up Josrika Computer Training Center Inc. in Tabunok, Talisay City in 2000 with their savings and a loan from the Owwa.
Carredo knew it was time to stop working overseas when his youngest child no longer recognized him when he returned for vacations.
In 1996, he had left his job as the school administrator of Interface Computer College in Cebu to work as a management information systems manager in Bangkok,
Thailand.
After almost three years abroad, he returned to the Philippines to become his own boss.
Offering courses in PC troubleshooting, networking, web design and Flash 2D animation, among others, Josrika is now a training center accredited with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority for vocational courses.
Graduates
Some graduates of his courses, which run from one month to one year, now work as call center agents, he said.
Josrika started out as a 10-seat Internet café. When Carredo noticed that there were no clients in the afternoons, he went to the barangays in Talisay and Pardo and invited out-of-school youth to study for free, getting 120 students for every two-month program.
This went on for three years, during which he transformed tricycle drivers into computer technicians. Some of his students became hospital encoders and one even became a businessman, opening a shop selling cellular phones.
40 branches
Three to four years ago, Carredo put up another business, this one built on Thai massage.
Nuat Thai Foot and Body Massage now has 40 branches nationwide.
Asked why he succeeded in business while other OFWs failed, he said one must really be interested in business and have a plan.
He should also manage the business himself, so he will be familiar with all aspects of it. And he should have a vision.
Carredo’s vision is to own a computer college in five to 10 years.
Former OFW, seafarer’s wife find success in business
SOME 30 years ago, Loida Sandalo was receiving regular remittances from her husband, a messman working on a ship overseas.
But with Oliver earning just $100 a month, which at the exchange rate of P8 to the US dollar, meant just P800 a month, she was having problems making ends meet, especially with relatives—thinking all OFWs are rich—trooping to the house frequently to ask for money.
"Matod Pa Sa Lola ni Noy Kulas." Join the story-writing contest on Cebuano folklore and win prizes.
“I told him to learn to cook so that he could become chief cook one day,” Sandalo, now 55, told Sun.Star Cebu in the vernacular.
Oliver’s long-distance culinary education began with her enclosing recipes in the letters she sent him.
In five years, he made chief cook. But just the same, Loida decided to get into business because with five sons to support, “ako man maglabad og budget.” (I would be the one to have problems with the budget.)
She opened a canteen at the Mactan Economic Zone but stopped after the long hours became too much for her.
Security
Three years ago, on the suggestion of a friend, she put up a security agency in Barangay, Kalunasan, Cebu City with P50,000 in capital. Later, she took out a loan under the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa)-National Livelihood Support Fund Livelihood Development Program for Overseas Filipino Workers.
Jadds Investigation and Security Services Agency now employs 70 security guards and has branches in Tagbilaran and Tacloban cities. Its clients include Gaisano Mactan, Mactan Doctors Hospital, Evergreen Park, and a subdivision in Mactan.
Sideline
Despite the success of her security business, Loida has continued with her “sideline,” receiving orders for cakes and catering for wedding receptions, barangay meetings and other occasions.
Two of her sons help in the business. Two other sons are seamen like their father.
With plans to ultimately have more than 100 security guards, she got another loan from the Owwa last month.
Her fiscal discipline has borne fruit. Yet, she is still planning for the future—a time when her husband and sons won’t want to board ships anymore.
She has bought lots on which she is now building apartments for rent.
Like Sandalo, Kenneth Carredo believes Owwa’s loan program is a godsend with its rate of nine percent per annum a bargain compared to other sources of credit.
Carredo, 42, an OFW returnee, and his wife put up Josrika Computer Training Center Inc. in Tabunok, Talisay City in 2000 with their savings and a loan from the Owwa.
Carredo knew it was time to stop working overseas when his youngest child no longer recognized him when he returned for vacations.
In 1996, he had left his job as the school administrator of Interface Computer College in Cebu to work as a management information systems manager in Bangkok,
Thailand.
After almost three years abroad, he returned to the Philippines to become his own boss.
Offering courses in PC troubleshooting, networking, web design and Flash 2D animation, among others, Josrika is now a training center accredited with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority for vocational courses.
Graduates
Some graduates of his courses, which run from one month to one year, now work as call center agents, he said.
Josrika started out as a 10-seat Internet café. When Carredo noticed that there were no clients in the afternoons, he went to the barangays in Talisay and Pardo and invited out-of-school youth to study for free, getting 120 students for every two-month program.
This went on for three years, during which he transformed tricycle drivers into computer technicians. Some of his students became hospital encoders and one even became a businessman, opening a shop selling cellular phones.
40 branches
Three to four years ago, Carredo put up another business, this one built on Thai massage.
Nuat Thai Foot and Body Massage now has 40 branches nationwide.
Asked why he succeeded in business while other OFWs failed, he said one must really be interested in business and have a plan.
He should also manage the business himself, so he will be familiar with all aspects of it. And he should have a vision.
Carredo’s vision is to own a computer college in five to 10 years.
Overseas Filipino Workers............the force that saved the Philippines from recession
When the world was struck by the sudden downfall of big financial institutions such as the Lehman Brothers and the bailout given to the American Insurance Group where our very own Philippine American Life (Philamlife) is connected was a big shock to many investors small and big alike.
But alas, what went wrong to many countries such as the USA where many Americans lost their very own homes was not felt in the Philippines. Many were able to withstand the storm generated the the so-called sub-prime fallout due to the remittances made by our very own OFW's which as of this date our foreign reserve amounted to more than P40B pesos.
In order that all of us can be well informed and be aware of what's happening around us I will try to publish in this blog what our filipino compatriots have been doing here and abroad to help in their own way to make their homeland a better place to live in.
But alas, what went wrong to many countries such as the USA where many Americans lost their very own homes was not felt in the Philippines. Many were able to withstand the storm generated the the so-called sub-prime fallout due to the remittances made by our very own OFW's which as of this date our foreign reserve amounted to more than P40B pesos.
In order that all of us can be well informed and be aware of what's happening around us I will try to publish in this blog what our filipino compatriots have been doing here and abroad to help in their own way to make their homeland a better place to live in.
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