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Noynoy to Arroyo: Where's job for Pinoys?


Genuine Opposition and Liberal Party senatorial candidate Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III on Wednesday chided Malacañang for bragging about jobs created by the Arroyo administration as announced by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in her Labor Day message Tuesday. In a statement, Aquino stressed that the unemployment rate in the Philippines remains highest among Southeast Asian countries. "Statistics show that in terms of providing decent employment for our people, we have not improved in the past five years. Unemployment remains at an average of about 11 percent," Aquino said. In rebuking Malacañang's pronouncements, Aquino cited the 2007 Asian Development Outlook of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) indicating that unemployment in the Philippines remains at an average of 11 percent from 2002 to 2006 followed by Indonesia at 9.84 percent. Thailand is the best performing in the region with 2 percent unemployment rate. The same report also said, "In a worrisome trend, the number of underemployed rose to 23 percent of total employment in 2006, up from 18 percent in 2004." "The Philippines needs to move to a higher growth trajectory and create more and higher-quality jobs for the rising numbers of unemployed, underemployed, and new entrants in the labor force," the ADB report said. The country's unemployment rate in 2002 is 11.4 percent; 2003, 11.3 percent; 2004, 11.8 percent; 2005, 11.5 percent; and 2006, 7.9 percent. The significant drop in 2006 is due to a change in the definition of unemployment per NSCB Resolution No. 15, Series of 2004, issued on 20 October 2004. "This only shows that despite the rosy projection of an improved economy, the government has not raised the employment level to significantly dent the unemployment problem in the country," Aquino said. Speaking at the gathering of workers under the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines and other alliances at the Folk Arts Theater on Tuesday, President Arroyo claimed that 1.5 million Filipinos were given jobs from January 2006 to January 2007. "How can you say that we have more jobs here when Filipinos, totaling nine million now, are taking the bitter pill of separation from their loved ones in order to find a job abroad?" Aquino asked. He said the creation of six million jobs in six years, which President Arroyo incorporated in her Ten-Point Agenda, remains unreachable in the absence of a true political will to set in place a program that will generate more jobs for the people. - GMANews.TV

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