Tuesday, November 04, 2008 Pinoys continue to leave
DESPITE the financial turmoil threatening to engulf the globe, there has so far been no stoppage in deployment of Filipino workers overseas.
Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) 7 information officer Imelda Lerida said Canada is still an open market for those wanting to find work there.
She said New Zealand was also accepting nurses from the Philippines through a “government-to-government hiring” process.
“Last October, they started hiring. We hope they’ll be coming over (again) at the end of November or early December,” she told Sun.Star Cebu in an interview two weeks ago.
In mid-October, Vice President Noli de Castro had warned that anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 overseas Filipino workers could lose their jobs in what some analysts are now calling the biggest crisis since the Great Depression.
What began as the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States has caused US financial institutions to fail, forcing government bailouts and coordinated interest rate cuts by the world’s central banks to keep credit flowing.
There is also a demand for workers other than nurses, the POEA 7 official said.
In Canada, there is a demand for caregivers, food attendants and hotel workers.
Lerida said Filipinos continue to go to Canada and other overseas destinations through the help of recruitment agencies, as well as after hearing of job opportunities from relatives already based abroad. Other Filipinos apply for overseas jobs directly through the Internet.
More professionals
Lerida said she was detecting a shift in the types of people leaving the country.
“I’ve noticed those attending the pre-departure orientation seminars (Pdos) held every Wednesday are more of the professionals now. Seldom can we find domestic helpers,” she said.
Every week, around 40 people attend the Pdos-a requirement for OFWs before leaving the country-at the Overseas Workers
Welfare Administration (Owwa) office.
Lerida said demand for workers also continues to be strong in Qatar and Europe.
Asked to comment on local job prospects in case OFWs should be displaced and forced to return to the country,
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-National Economic Research and Business Assistance Center 7 manager Minerva Yap said, “There is no job shortage, but a shortage of qualified people” for the jobs available.
She said business process outsourcing (BPO) firms in Cebu are constantly looking for workers for both voice and non-voice operations because of the turnover caused, among others, by employees leaving after finding work in other BPO firms abroad, most notably in Singapore.
She said the BPOs in Singapore are mostly into software development, animation and creative industries.
Elias Tecson, program management division chief of the DTI 7, said the DTI could give entrepreneurial seminars to OFWs, in coordination with the Owwa, depending on the skills that the returning OFWs were interested in learning.
But a wealth of opportunities also await those who might want to try their hand in business.
In line with its One Town, One Product (Otop) program, the DTI could help those interested in making processed food, he said.
He said food processing seminars have been scheduled for this year in Argao town, which is open to participants from its neighboring cities and municipalities, as well as in Mandaue and Danao cities. The Danao seminar is open to constituents of District 5 of Rep. Ramon “Red” Durano IV.
Otop is a project of the Arroyo administration to promote entrepreneurship. Under the project, local chief executives of each city and municipality take the lead in identifying and developing a specific product or service in their respective areas.
The Otop product of Argao is torta (native cake leavened with tuba). For Danao and Mandaue cities, it is processed food and beverages, with sugar an additional Otop product of Danao.
Tecson said the DTI is now helping Mandaue City push its bodbod (sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf), bibingka (rice cake) and tagaktak (crispy fried rice noodles) by studying how to increase their shelf life to six months to one year, so that they could also be marketed as pasalubong (souvenir) items.
Those living in Carmen town might want to check out the loomweaving business, Tecson added, as local producers currently cannot cope with the demand for sinamay (woven abaca fiber) from local exporters and from Taiwan. Sinamay is
the Otop product of Carmen.
There is also a demand for woven baskets.
“We’re conducting the Spin, or Subcontracting Partnership Innovation Network program, in coordination with Jenifer Cruz of GTH (Cebu-Gifts, Toys and Houseware Manufacturers and Exporters Association),” Tecson said.
There are also loomweavers in Argao town and Carcar City in Cebu; and in Valencia town in Negros Oriental, he said.
For those living in Tabogon town, whose Otop product is maguey fiber, the maguey can be used for making rope or gift items, like angels for Christmas decors, he said. (CTL)
