DoLE sets up P402-M fund for displaced workers — Roque

Labor Secretary Marianito Roque urged the Philippines’ Three Plus (3+) Social Partners, labor, management, government, industries, and other prominent sectors, to unite in enablinh the country ride out the global economic crisis, even as he bared that the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) has allotted some P402.852 million to urgently assist the workers displaced by the threat.

In the opening of the DoLE “Multi-Sectoral Conference on the Global Financial Crisis” with the theme, “Responding to the Employment Challenge,” Roque stressed the importance and necessity of a joint effort among the 3+ Social Partners to effect salient interventions, ensure effective assistance and mitigate the impact of the global crisis on “every affected human being, every affected Filipino worker.”

The one-day workshop was attended by more than 300 labor, management, and industry leaders, representatives of economic and other salient government agencies, leaders of land- and sea-based sectors of the country’s vital overseas employment industry, global organizations like the International Organization for Migration, and other sectors, complemented by the top DoLE leadership and the Department’s labor and employment experts.

In convening the workshop, the secretary had commended the earlier response of the giant Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc. to the DoLE’s call to assist the affected workers through an earlier memorandum of agreement that the department and the federation had successfully forged.

Roque, in particular, evoked the urgency of assisting and pushing effective interventions and safety net measures, in behalf of some 33,000 affected workers who have begun to experience shorter working hours, along with the more than 40,000 workers displaced by the global economic crisis, citing the latest DoLE report.

He said there was absolutely no need to “perform magic as we have been (wrongly and unfairly) accused” as regards the accrual effects of the crisis on our workers and industries, emphasizing instead to the social partners the importance of assistance for wage-earners threatened by the global financial crisis.

Roque said the Arroyo administration has come up with measures to assist workers who have lost their jobs here and abroad due to the global economic crisis, one of which is to come up with a website on available job vacancies.

He advised the jobless to log on the Labor department’s Phil-Jobnet Web site.

The site provides a convenient, readily available job service 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

“The strategy seeks to reinforce the department’s efforts to preserve and sustain job opportunities amidst the global crisis cooperation with social partners,’’ Roque said.

Displaced overseas workers are advised to avail of the free services and programs geared at assisting them.

These include livelihood support, counseling and guidance. –Mina Diaz, Daily Tribune