120,000 work visas in Qatar to be made available for Filipinos in 2009

MANILA, Philippines - Qatar will be making available as many as 120,000 work visas for Filipinos in 2009, the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Doha said on Wednesday. The Peninsula reported that of the 120,000 work visas, 40,500 are for job orders that have already been processed since December 2008. “There are at least 37,000 more vacancies for Filipinos," said Vivo Vidal of POLO in the report. Because of this, he said the number of Filipino workers entering Qatar have been going up. “The number of Filipino workers here has doubled between 2007 and 2008 over the previous years," he said. Figures released by the Qatar Statistics Authority showed that last month alone, Qatar’s population surged by over 64,500. It added that the overall population of the country stood at 1.62 million by the end of February this year. - Kimberly Jane T. Tan, GMANews.TV