MANILA TIMES EDITORIAL: GRIM PROSPECTS IN SAUDI ARABIA
MANILA, JUNE 2, 2011 (MANILA TIMES) Another unpleasant reminder came from Saudi Arabia the other day.
Some 350,000 Overseas Filipino Workers in Saudi Arabia could be losing their jobs because the Kingdom is about to carry out two labor rules the government there has so far been lax about.
One is the rule that limits overseas workers to only six years of employment. The other is the law that calls for the "Saudization" of the labor force.
On Monday, the Saudi government announced that it would no longer renew work permits for foreign workers who have been in Saudi Arabia for six years or more.
The most accepted estimate is that more than one million Filipinos live and work in Saudi Arabia. Most of them are OFWs in technical jobs related to the oil industry. Some are service providers—domestic workers, handymen, drivers, accountants, pharmacists and of course doctors and nurses. There are even very highly paid veterinarians in the kingdom. The Filipinos are well-liked and generally well-regarded.
Of the one million KSA-based OFWs, at least a third, or around 330,000 to 350,000 have been working there for more than six years.
These are the ones, especially the older OFWs, who are nearing the retirement age of 56 to 65 (depending on the job) and are now in fear of being given their termination notices. Hopefully, many will get generous farewell fees and bonuses.
The head of Migrante-Middle East, John Monterona, says there are some 1.2 million OFWs in the Saudi kingdom. Sixty percent of these are "rehires," those whose contracts of employment have been renewed after the termination of the original contracts. The estimated 350,000 who will be hit by the implementation of the six-year rule are the older OFWs.
The KSA government wants Saudi Arabians to take over the jobs that foreign workers—mainly from the Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the Philippines—now hold. Hence, the Saudization policy. The so-called Arab Spring—the emergence of a more democratic political set-up in the Middle East—will result in the introduction of a more modern, less patriarchal, economic system. That is why governments in the Middle East, like that of the KSA, are keen on making their own citizens learn to work and take over the jobs now held by aliens.
When the dust settles in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, which the turmoil of the Arab Spring is modernizing, those countries would most likely also introduce labor-localization rules. That means even Yemen, which has only 1,422 Filipinos registered with the Philippine Embassy, would one day no longer need as many Filipino workers.
We understand why Philippine Overseas Employment Administrator Carlos Cao Jr. feels obliged to make feel-good statements. That is what he said to the Manila Bulletin "in a phone interview," according to a story by Roy C. Mabasa and Samuel P. Medenilla, about the Saudi threat.
"We are not unduly alarmed with the announcement since the Saudi Arabian government had earlier expressed their intention for a Saudization of their labor market a long time ago," the Bulletin story quotes Cao.
"We always expect there will come a time when the labor market abroad will become saturated. That is why our government is now advocating a massive reintegration program for our OFWs," he added. He also said that the POEA is looking to South Korea and Australia as alternative deployment destinations for the OFWs who lose their jobs.
We hope the President, NEDA chief Cayetano Paderanga and the other key economic brains of the Cabinet, do not think Mr. Cao's words alone are a sound basis for policy planning.
Rebuild our industrial and agriculture bases This grim prospect for the 350,000 Filipinos now earning relatively good wages and salaries—and remitting as much as 80 percent of what they earn to their families here—is another unpleasant reminder to our government officials and private-sector economic leaders. The reminder is for them to get together to really do something about their long neglected duty to rebuild our country's demolished industrial base and abandoned agricultural base.
The current rate of unemployment should make President Aquino and the administration's economic managers decide to be as obsessed with solving our socio-economic problems as Lee Kuan Yew and his fellow founding fathers of Singapore in the 60s were with building their country, a new independent state, from virtually nothing.
The President and his team must chart a new plan to revive our industries and our agriculture because we have to create jobs for the millions of OFWs who will be coming home and the millions more who are here and jobless. In this effort he must enlist the great taipans and tycoons whose names are found on the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest and on some other lists as the smartest and most productive industrialists and businessmen.
Yes, the Philippines has no choice now but to continue exporting OFWs to countries that will take them—and we must not stop upgrading the skills of our work force to better qualify them for jobs available in countries other than those in the Middle East and Northern Africa (the so-called MENA nations). But at the same time, serious, consistent and planned work must be done to get our economy booming.
Making the Philippines less and less dependent on the export of warm bodies to other countries must become everybody's goal. A Philippines humming with the sound of factories, and our landscape green and golden, bursting with harvests, must be made the focus of all the anti-poverty and productivity-boosting programs of the government—if we want our country to have a chance of entering the First World.
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2011 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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