Sunday, August 03, 2008 Malilong: Employment abroad By Frank Malilong The Other Side
THE reported maltreatment of Cebuano welders by their employer in Poland is another sad chapter in the saga of the people whom our government loves to humor as our “modern day heroes.” We have heard stories of Filipina domestics raped by their masters in the Middle East and of mine workers kidnapped and kept hostage in Africa.
What compounds the reported plight of the welders is that there are only very few Filipinos there. A daughter who lives in Warsaw with her Polish husband says our country only maintains a consulate in Poland; the nearest embassy is in Hungary. The Cebuano workers may have to work out a solution on their own.
***
While we’re on the subject of employment abroad, the Los Angeles Times reported recently that the United States is experiencing a shortage of trained workers in the “allied health professions” which, the paper said, include “respiratory care practitioners, medical transcriptionists, radiographers and about 200 other occupations that make about 60 percent of health care workers.”
“The allied health profession is a large and varied group,” the LA Times said. “Some like laboratory scientists who analyze blood and other bodily fluids, need a bachelor’s degree. Pharmacists, licensed social workers and physical therapists need advanced degrees.”
The newspaper described some jobs as “low-paying.” An emergency medical technician whose job is to provide emergency care and transport receives an average pay of $12.19 per hour. The hourly rate for a dental hygienist is $36.33 while that of a pharmacist is $53.03.
The pay is of course a fortune when compared to what these workers would be getting here. The $32.36 that a clinical laboratory scientist (our equivalent of the medical technologist) earns for every hour of work, for example, is more than what she would be getting in one day if she worked in a hospital in Cebu.
Of course, there are trade-offs. If you live abroad to earn more, you miss the company of your family and friends. On the other hand, if you choose to stay, you’re forever chained to near-starvation wages. It’s like a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.
***
A friend and former colleague in the Freeman is now doing PR stuff for Sen. Mar Roxas. He recently sent me (and probably most, if not all, of the columnists in Cebu) a text message identifying the media handlers in Cebu of the probable 2010 presidential candidates as Nanding Celeste for Senate President Manuel Villar, Antolin de la Serna for Roxas and Choy Torralba for Loren Legarda.
Looks like my former colleague and Antolin have a lot of ground to cover, if we believe the results of a recent survey by Pulse Asia that showed Roxas, who was partnered with Sen. Francis Pangilinan, enjoying only a 13 percent preference from the voters in Luzon, the National Capital Region and Mindanao.
The combination of Legarda and Sen. Francis Escudero, on the other hand, got the nod of at least 40 percent of the respondents while the pair of Villar and Noli de Castro came a far second at 26 percent.
You can guess who among Choy, Nanding and Tolin were wearing a wide grin after they read the Inquirer report on the survey.
