1,000 more OFWs laid off in Taiwan

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) yesterday reported that at least 1,000 more overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have lost their jobs in Taiwan and other countries due to the global financial crisis.

POEA chief Jennifer Manalili said the agency has recorded a total of 3,567 displaced OFWs as of Dec. 23, 2008, up from 2,287 displaced OFWs recorded on Dec. 16, 2008.

Manalili noted that 3,321 of the displaced workers were employed in Taiwanese electronics firms which declared bankruptcy because of the global financial crisis.

There were also a few reports of retrenchment from a shipbuilding firm in Australia, a garments company in United Kingdom as well as electrical and service establishments in Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Macau and Korea.

Despite the rising number of retrenched workers, Manalili insisted that employment prospects for highly skilled Filipino workers remain bright.

“We still have a current balance of 389,014 unfilled job orders and most of these are vacancies for professional workers in the Middle East and other developed countries,” Manalili said.

Labor Secretary Marianito Roque is not worried, maintaining that the impact of the world economic crisis on the country’s overseas and local employment is still “manageable.”

“We are not jittery about it because our total displacement is just the same daily average number of workers we deployed overseas,” Roque pointed out.

Roque further disputed reports that the number of unemployed Filipinos could reach as high as 11 million as a result of the world crisis.

“There are people who will be affected by the crisis, but not at that magnitude. Our business has proven to be resilient,” Roque said, noting that such projection is four times the current 2.6 million unemployed nationwide.

Based on the current trend, Roque said the labor department only expects less than a million Filipino workers to be displaced here and abroad.

“We have 420,000 workers from the electronics industry and 120,000 from garments – these are the sectors that are likely to suffer from the economic crisis, but not all these workers will be displaced,” he explained.

Roque said the government is closely watching the situation in Taiwan and the labor department will deploy a team there in the next two weeks to assist those who could be retrenched.

“We are sending a team so they can do profiling and can immediately facilitate the re-employment of the workers even before they could be retrenched,” Roque added.

Roque said DOLE has already allocated a budget for the re-training of displaced workers, as well as funds to help them put up their own business and other sources of additional income. –Mayen Jaymalin, Philippine Star