DOLE chief says global crisis will not affect OFW deployment

MANILA, Philippines - The current global crisis on food and fuel is not expected to affect the deployment of Filipino workers abroad, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) chief said on Friday.

Actually, Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said, OFW deployment in the first half of the year even went up and that most of the workers were bound for the Middle East.

“I don’t have the exact figure but it went up beyond 6 percent in the first semester," Roque said in an interview.

He said that in Saudi Arabia alone, the embassy processes 1,000 visas daily and this is due to the high demands for OFWs.

Roque said that the high demand for fuel has created a "boom" in the industry which resulted in the demand for more workers.

Engineers, architects, construction workers, welders and even nurses are currently in demand in Saudi Arabia because of the construction of several infrastructure projects, he added.

Roque's assurance came in reaction to a warning issued by the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) that there global crisis might result in the displacement of Filipino workers from their overseas jobs, citing the case of Taiwan where about 90,000 Filipino workers are deployed.

On Friday, Roque did not mention Taiwan but said that there was no need to impose mitigating measures since our OFWs are unlikely to be displaced.

“The crisis is not in the Middle East, it's in US and we don’t have that much OFWs there,"Roque said.

However, Roque said should there be any returning OFWs it won't be a problem since the country has integrated programs and livelihood assistance which are in place to assist displaced OFWs.

Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) data showed that some 516,466 documented OFWs have been deployed from January to May this year.

The same data showed that new hires increased by 8.6 percent from 142,618 to 154,841 from January to May this year.

“The 516,466 OFWs deployed from January to May 2008 represents a substantial growth of 12.4 percent (+57,052), from the total 459,414 OFWs deployed in the same period in 2007," Roque said.

Aside from Saudi Arabia, Roque said other countries in the Middle East like Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and others are hiring more OFWs to fill the vacancies. - GMANews.TV

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