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Sunday, January 06, 2008
Official: 1 million jobs goal 'doubtful'
MANILA -- The labor department's goal of achieving easily the one million target deployment this year would be impossible, an official said.
Jackson Gan, vice-president of the Federated Association of Manpower Exporters Inc., (Fame), said the government would find it difficult to breach the one million target since most of those deployed last year or almost half a million were rehires.
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There were only 1,012,054 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) deployed last year.
Gan also noted that the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) approved 100,000 vacant job orders for manpower agencies in 2007 have not been filled up.
According to him, the POEA is "counting on an increase number of rehires for 2008, expected to be 530,000 by the year end to be able to reach the one-million mark."
Most of the OFWs deployed last year were highly skilled and professionals.
But he stressed that large numbers of professional and highly skilled workers who are qualified to work abroad are not inclined anymore to leave the country because of the appreciation of the peso against the dollar.
A worker who left the country this year at a salary of US$1,000 was earning close to P50,000 at the start of 2007 however by the end of 2007 this figure was down to P41,000.
A loss of 20 percent of the income for OFWs this year was estimated by Business World to be P24 billion.
"Workers are not attracted to overseas job opportunities because of the strong peso and they would rather seek work in the country since the peso is predicted to hit P38 to a dollar by end of 2008," Gan declared.
He also said the country lacks manpower to fill up the huge demand in the Middle East for construction workers because of an aging migrant work force and inexperienced workers in the country, which are not acceptable to international countries that require highly skilled workers with the right experience.
Because of these impending problems, he has called on the government to hold a new manpower summit for the stakeholders so that the proper solutions to the lack of qualified manpower can be crafted and implemented with the help of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) and the Department of Education (DepEd). (MSN/Sunnex)For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star General Santos. (January 6, 2008 issue)
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