RP deploying fewer maids, more professionals

THE country is sending fewer domestics to Hong Kong, Singapore and Italy, where Indonesian women are willing to work for less than the $400 a month that Filipinos charge, Labor officials said yesterday.

They said state policy encouraging higher-skilled jobs had also cut the number of Filipino domestics to Hong Kong to 18,286 in 2008 from 22,127 in 2007, a decline of 17 percent. Deployment of domestics dropped 20.7 percent in Singapore and 42.7 percent in Italy in the same period.

“Our focus is on the deployment of professional and highly skilled workers, which lessens the [number of] vulnerable … workers coming from the Philippines,” said Leo Cacdac, deputy administrator of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

That focus had also reduced the proportion of women sent abroad to work, to 48 percent in 2008 from 60 percent in 2006, added acting Labor Secretary Lourdes Trasmonte.

Speaking at the Migrant Workers Day celebration, Trasmonte said deployments overseas had increased despite predictions of a decline.

“Amidst global joblessness we now send a record-breaking 3,386 Filipinos each… day to gainful jobs abroad,” Trasmonte said. That compares with 3,170 a day early last year, Labor statistics show.

The number of foreign employers registered with the agency rose 6.6 percent to 21,286 last year, generating 637,476 job orders or 5.1 percent more than the previous year’s, Trasmonte said.

Last year, the agency also sent nine marketing missions to Canada, Taiwan, Romania, Bulgaria, Taiwan, Australia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to generate more jobs for Filipinos, she said.

The agency will also lead a three-day job fair on June 14.

To protect workers, the administration has also launched a new campaign against illegal recruiters. –Gigi Muñoz David, Manila Standard Today