Promises, promises, promises. Of all the campaign promises presidential candidates make, the hardest one to keep would be in the jobs department. Even as the country heads into the May 9 elections, global factors, particularly the oil glut and its continuing price plunge in the world market, are affecting the employment of Filipinos in the Middle East where we have around 10 million overseas Filipino workers deployed.
With 9.1 million Filipinos in the country out of work, according to a recent Social Weather Stations survey, many more who are being laid off in the Middle East will add to the ranks of the unemployed.
Filipino workers in the Middle East are mostly employed in the oil fields or related areas resulting from the oil boom such as construction, hotels and service sectors. Taking the biggest hit are our seafarers who man those huge oil tankers carrying crude to many parts of the globe. Those who have been displaced are looking at other countries in the Middle East but plummeting oil prices have affected the whole region. It’s not just Saudi Arabia and Iran who are at loggerheads. Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are reeling from the oversupply of oil and falling prices.
The Aquino administration, on its last four months in office, claims it has 24,000 jobs waiting for our returning OFWs who will be displaced from the Middle East crisis. That’s small comfort, considering we have around 10 million Filipinos working in the oil-producing countries. What kind of jobs will the government provide the returnees? Will it be the same onerous contractualized work they left in order to seek better employment opportunities abroad?
In some instances, the working conditions in foreign lands are even worse than the ones Filipinos left behind. Take the case of the 13 Pinays who perished in the Capitol Hotel fire in Kurdistan, Iraq.Working as spa attendants in the hotel’s basement sauna and massage area, the victims had written relatives that the basement did not have any fire escape exit.
We have the makings of a social volcano if the unemployment problem is not addressed by the next President. Of the 9.1 million Filipino out of work, the SWS survey taken from Dec. 5 to 8 showed 4.1 million resigned or voluntarily left their jobs because of poor working conditions, such as low pay or a dead-end position that does not offer advancement opportunities.
Another 3.4 million were retrenched under the exploitative and illegal contractualization the Aquino administration and all the preceding governments had allowed. So, while Rodrigo Duterte vows to kill all the criminals, Jojo Binay plans to make Makati the model for the whole country, Grace Poe offers a dawn of change, Mar Roxas promises to pass the Freedom of Information Bill, and Miriam Defensor Santiago threatens to throw all government crooks in jail—not one of them has come out to say clearly how he or she will address the country’s unemployment problem .
Don’t ask me how; I’m not running for president.
Meanwhile, the Manila-based Asian Development Bank will extend a $400 million (P19 billion) loan to sustain the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps. The loan, according to an ADB official, is to help keep students in school where the Conditional Cash Transfer makes its biggest impact on marginalized Filipino families.
This, even as Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman has yet to make a full accounting of the government’s own P70-billion funding of the CCT program.
No airport at Sangley point
The Aquino administration announced that the planned new international airport will no longer be located in Sangley Point nor on any other proposed sites near Manila Bay. The reason, according to Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya (him again) is that water traffic in the area would be affected. The Philippine Ports Authority is objecting to the Manila Bay airport project because the bay serves as anchorage area and would disrupt the flow of commercial ships. But many international airports are built near the sea and even on reclaimed land like Hong Kong’s sprawling Chek Lap Kok with a modern rail link to downtown Kowloon.
It took Aquino and Abaya to decide scrapping the major project all of their six years in office. Perhaps there were no takers of what could be another rigged bidding for the contract? Why only now when the Sangley airport project was proposed four years ago—are there fifty shades of a shady deal?
An estimated 100 million international passengers are projected to arrive in the Philippines by 2040. This could mean jobs in the tourism industry and related travel and service sectors like hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, and our world-renowned island resorts
‘Hasta la vista, baby’
In bidding goodbye to the Department of Foreign Affairs press corps after he resigned from Aquino’s Cabinet, Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, said “I’m using the words of an American icon: ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’” The American idol of course, was Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The light-hearted, off-the-cuff words was out of character for the US-educated Del Rosario who’s seen as a serious, no-nonsense official who fought for the country’s sovereignty against China’s sweeping claim of the South China Sea.
Aside from filing the legal challenge to China’s claim with the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Del Rosario also brought up the Philippine case in every multilateral forum like Asean and in bilateral meetings with his counterparts in Washington, Tokyo, Seoul and every Asean capital.
The richest man in the Cabinet even before he joined the Aquino administration, Del Rosario donated his salary to the DFA fund. He will surely be missed by the career diplomats and the rank and file.
The outgoing secretary recommended career Ambassador Laura del Rosario as acting secretary (I’m not related to Laura nor she to Secretary Del Rosario) DFA sources said there was strong objection among career diplomats to Undersecretary for Policy Evan Garcia whose wife, Ambassador Jocelyn Batoon Garcia, made a lot of enemies when she was head of the Office of Personnel and Administrative Services.