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Laid off OFWs reaches 5,774 - POEA report


MANILA, Philippines - The number of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) who lost their jobs due to the global economic crisis has reached 5,774, data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) showed. As of February 24, a total of 5,774 Filipino workers have been laid off from their work abroad – 4,375 of whom have reportedly retuned to the Philippines since October 2008. The POEA report, based on data from Philippine Overseas Labor Offices onsite, said that Taiwan had fired 4,197 Filipino workers from the electronics, metal works, and semiconductor industries. But the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO), the country’s de-facto embassy in Taiwan, said as of the end of January, it had already assisted 4,740 displaced OFWs from 95 companies mainly from the manufacturing sector. It had also reportedly facilitated the entry of some 4,445 new workers to Taiwan over the same period, for a net job loss in Taiwan of only 295. The POEA Planning Branch told GMANews.TV on Tuesday that their figures did not match with MECO’s because it might have just not been updated. It added that their data for Taiwan originally comes from MECO. Meanwhile, the POEA also said that 729 Filipinos have been displaced in the United Arab Emirates’ service industry while Canada’s oil and gas industries had laid off 180. A total 155 OFWs were also fired by Macau’s construction and hotel industries as 112 more were displaced in Brunei by its garments sector. Korea has also laid off 104 Filipinos in its electronics industry. The other countries that have displaced Filipino workers are Australia (81), Saudi Arabia (66), Greece (31), Russia (19), Singapore (19), Malaysia (17), UK (16), USA (15), Japan (14), Poland (11), and Qatar (8). The POEA, however, has said that 897 of these displaced workers have started undergoing conciliation, with 544 of the cases already settled with the amount totaling to P11.4 million. It added that 1,492 OFWs have been referred, allowing 36 to return to the same employer in Taiwan and 50 more just awaiting their visas. As of the same date, 366 Filipino workers awaiting deployment have also been held in abeyance because of the closure of projects or reduced production in the Australia, UAE, Canada, Palau, and Spain. However, MECO has recently reported that Taiwanese employers have been convinced to halt the lay offs and instead enter into flexible work programs. “MECO also negotiated with the Taiwan Council on Labor Affairs to relax its rules on quotas for foreign workers to give employers more flexibility in retaining their overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)," MECO resident representative Antonio Basilio said in a recent report. Moreover, POEA Jennifer Manalili has said that 400,000 more job orders await Filipinos abroad, with their agency deploying about 5,346 workers daily. - GMANews.TV
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