Pinoys remain top choice abroad, Labor chief says

MANILA, Philippines - Citing data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on Tuesday said that many countries still prefer Filipinos in terms of choosing migrant workers. According to the POEA, a total of 165,737 Filipinos left for work abroad in January 2009 as compared to 132,285 in January 2008 – showing an increase of 25.3 percent. “This resoundingly affirms the sustained global preference for our skilled and semi-skilled overseas Filipino workers (OFW), and their productive role in staving off the adverse effects of the global slowdown in the greater portion of the world’s economies," said Labor Secretary Marianito Roque in a statement. Moreover, he said that despite the global financial slowdown, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said that OFW remittances from more than 190 host countries worldwide reached more than US$1.265 billion in January 2009 – representing a positive 0.1 percent growth from the same period in 2008. Based on the BSP report, the United States, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Canada, Singapore, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates were the top sources of the almost US$1.3 billion remittances in the first month of 2009. In 2008, a record 1.376 million OFWs were deployed in more than 190 host nations globally, while they remitted some US$16.4 billion to the country, the highest in history so far. He said that the rise in OFW deployment and remittances may be attributed to the “strength of the country’s bilateral relations and agreements for assuring sustained employment opportunities for OFWs." This, he said, was achieved through agreements entered into by the Philippine government with major host destination countries such as Canada, Australia, Japan, and Qatar which prefer skilled and semi-skilled OFWs for their health care, education, real estate, and power and energy industries. In addition, the labor secretary said that they had already dispatched teams of labor and employment experts to host destinations affected by the global financial crisis like South Korea, Taiwan, and Dubai to help OFWs avail of the “pertinent assistance including finding alternative employment, and retooling opportunities." - Kimberly Jane T. Tan, GMANews.TV