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OFWs shun alternative livelihood program


MANILA, Philippines - While the government has been citing a program to give alternative livelihood to displaced overseas Filipino workers as a key offering among its crisis contingency measures, the chief of the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration (OWWA) told reporters in a briefing Monday that more OFWs still prefer trying their luck with redeployment abroad to building their own business here. "The entrepreneurial spirit is not inculcated in them; so, since they have had a taste of working abroad, they want to go back to it," OWWA Administrator Carmelita S. Dimzon said. OWWA has been tasked by the Secretary of Labor to provide a P10,000 grant for livelihood equipment to displaced OFWs who have been trained in business by OWWA and its accredited partners Dream Inc. and the Technology Resource Center. Loans of up to P50,000 may also be availed of by OFWs who wish to expand their business. Ms. Dimzon said that only eight OFWs have joined this program. "There are around 253 OFWs that have been trained in various livelihood programs and there are 71 currently training with us. But so far, only eight have asked for a loan. We’re not keeping the loan from OFWs; it’s just that there’s not many who wish to get a loan," Ms. Dimzon said. She added that if more displaced OFWs know about the benefits of starting a business, less would choose to be away from their families and work abroad. She admitted, however, the difficulty in convincing OFWs to try a micro-business where they would need to grow their money and not earn a salary in a company. Records at the Labor department show that some 5,400 OFWs have lost their jobs, so far. Many of these displacements were from export oriented factories in Taiwan and South Korea, but there have also been retrenchments in the shipbuilding, oil and gas, and tourism industries. At the same time, the department is still pushing the deployment of so-called recession-proof overseas jobs like health care. In a forum organized by the Yuchengo Center, Labor Assistant Secretary Ma. Teresa M. Soriano said that it has launched the Unified Nurses’ Learning and Deployment Project, which is designed to form a pool of qualified nurses for deployment to local hospitals and abroad. Ms. Soriano said that the project would provide provincial hospitals with the much-needed manpower as well as provide valuable skills experience to nurses wishing to work in other countries. The department held a multi-sectoral workshop with industry groups and tripartite partners last week in order to come up with other measures. Among others, the department is considering mandatory insurance for departing OFWs and employing retrenched OFWs as trainers in government training centers. — Emilia Narni J. David, BusinessWorld
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