Monthly Archives: January 2012

There are many things that mankind should be afraid of in 2012. The verdict of the Corona impeachment trial. An impending economic global debt crisis. The possibility of limited nuclear conflict with North Korea and Iran. The end of the world as per the Mayan calendar. And PMS.

MANILA, Philippines – Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) may soon find securing overseas employment certificate (OECs) as easy as going shopping.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

MANILA, Philippines – The military yesterday challenged the New York-based Human Rights Watch to prove that soldiers were involved in unexplained killings.

Growth in emerging and developing economies is expected to slow in the medium term owing to the worsening external environment and a weakening of internal demand, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday.

Despite the recent frequent hype about the supposed improvement in the image of the country during the administration of President Aquino resulting in increased investments in the country and thus the creation of more jobs, Aquino fell short of creating labor opportuni-ties for Filipinos, the International Labor Organi-zation (ILO) said, warning that job generation must…

MANILA, Philippines — Call center operators in the Philippines who serve mostly U.S. clients on Wednesday shrugged off President Barack Obama’s initiative to bring outsourced jobs back home.

MANILA, Philippines – US President Barack Obama proposed several tax measures aimed at encouraging American companies to bring jobs back home, a move that is expected to have an adverse impact on the Philippines’ growing outsourcing industry.

EMPLOYMENT GROWTH in the Philippines has remained positive but “volatile” in 2011 amid weather disturbances that caused fluctuations in economic growth, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said in a report, as it challenged government to push for growth that will create jobs and increase productivity.

DUE to the rise of the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in the country, Health Secretary Enrique Ona said they are directing the interventions to populations groups where transmission of the virus has been high.

AN HIV-AIDS epidemic is a big possibility because the government has failed to allocate enough funds for contraceptives and programs aimed at preventing the spread of the disease in the country, Gabriela Women’s party-list Rep. Luzviminda Ilagan said Monday.

MANILA, Philippines – Men are more likely to be unemployed than women in the Philippines and Thailand, according to a recent report by the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Despite steady economic growth, the Philippine job market has yet to generate jobs that would provide a significant number of its workers decent pay.

Year after year, I promise myself that I would take charge of my lifestyle, changing to better habits, opting for better choices, and hopefully emerging successful in weight management at the end of the year. This year was no different from years past  you enter the holidays thinking you would be more disciplined than last…

The global economy needs to generate 600 million productive jobs over the next decade to generate sustainable economic growth and maintain social cohesion in affected countries, an International Labor Organization (ILO) report on global employment said Monday.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has shelved its plan to increase the rate on the expanded creditable withholding tax that is levied on self-employed individuals. Kim Jacinto-Henares, BIR commissioner said that based on a public hearing last month, affected taxpayers warned that to increase the creditable withholding tax (CWT) rate might result in the…

Today, PERA may not only mean money. It may also represent an investment opportunity. Of course, not in reference to local legal tender, PERA, under Republic Act 9505, stands for Personal Equity and Retirement Account. This law came about because of the government’s drive to promote the development of the capital market by tapping in…

A PARTY-LIST lawmaker has urged the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to reconsider its earlier proposal to scrap the “study now, pay later” program despite its low repayment rate, it was learned on Monday.

In a separate report, HRW said the Philippine government should disable abusive paramilitary forces and take concrete steps to hold those responsible for killings and other rights violations to account.

At least 271 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were reported to have contracted the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2011, higher by 56 percent compared to the 174 OFWs found HIV-positive in 2010, a Philippine lawmaker said on Monday.

Known as “the crewing capital of the world,” with more than 300,000 Filipinos working on maritime decks all over the globe, the Philippines must prioritize the ratification of Maritime Labor Convention of 2006 (MLC 2006), according to Bantay OCW maritime lawyer Dennis Gorecho.

MANILA, Philippines – HIV/AIDS cases will rise by 14,000 this year, according to projections by the Department of Health (DOH). Gerard Belimac, program manager for the department’s National AIDS/Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention and Control Program, said 60 percent of that increase will be in Metro Manila, Cebu City and Davao City.

MANILA, Philippines – President Aquino assured the public yesterday that the government would address concerns over rising oil prices by providing more assistance to the transport and ensuring stable prices of basic commodities. Aquino said the government is continuously conducting dialogues with transport groups and that measures are being readied to ease their plight. He…

THE services sector, which includes supermarkets, banks, hotels and restaurants, and logistics, will be the main creators of jobs between 2012 and 2020. This was one of the highlights of an extensive study which was revealed by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on Friday on the labor market in the Philippines until the…

THE number of Filipinos who considered themselves poor has decreased, the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed on Thursday. Results of the survey, which were first published in BusinessWorld, showed that 45 percent of the respondents — an estimated 9.1 million households — said that they were “poor.”

HONGKONG—The number of domestics applying for permanent residency here has gone up to an average of more than 200 a month from just one before a landmark ruling in 2010 saying an Immigration ordinance stopping domestics from gaining permanent residency is unconstitutional.

FILIPINO children work in extremely hazardous fisheries. The most notorious and extremely dangerous of deep sea jobs is in muro-ami which employs children as swimmers and divers using nets to fish in reefs. Called reef hunters, they dive for fish or free snagged nets. The perception is that their smaller bodies are better for diving…

The much-touted Public-Private Partnership program did not take off last year. I put it down to “bureaucratic naiveté”. A new Cabinet whose expertise, in the main, was in successfully running private businesses. They had not come up against the lega l hoopla and bureaucratic inertia that pervades the Philippine government. Nor be involved in ensuring…

MANILA, Philippines – As it forecast Philippine growth at 4.8 percent this year, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) gave some advice on how the country can address the challenges that a global downturn may bring.

PARIS: A long-term fall in the global abortion rate has tapered off and the number of unsafe pregnancy terminations is rising worryingly, according to a report published by The Lancet on Thursday. Between 1995 and 2003, the number of abortions around the world for every 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44 fell from 35…