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Economic downturn weighs on Filipino migrant laborers
Tue Mar 24, 2009 9:10pm EDT
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By Karen Lema
MANILA (Reuters) - Like millions of Filipinos, Alma Ang left her homeland to work abroad for a salary far higher than she could have ever earned at home.
Now, as the global financial crisis bites, Filipino migrant workers face the prospect of losing their jobs abroad and returning home unemployed and often in debt.
In the case of Ang, after paying a recruitment agency 120,000 pesos (about $2,500) for a job at an electronics factory in Taiwan, she was retrenched within a year and is back in the Philippines without any work at all.
"I wanted to earn more money so I could build a house for my family, but that did not happen," said Ang, 31, who gave up her job as a quality control officer at a garment factory near Manila for a job in Taiwan that paid four times her salary.
As the global economic crisis deepens, countries such as the Philippines, which are heavily reliant on remittances sent home by migrant workers, face the prospect that workers may return en masse after losing jobs in recession-hit economies abroad.
Migrante International, an NGO that assists Filipino migrant workers around the world, predicts that 100,000 workers may lose their jobs this year.
"We have yet to feel the full effects of the global economic crisis," Gary Martinez, head of Migrante International, told Reuters. "The situation will certainly worsen in the coming months."
A mass influx of returned, unemployed workers could weigh on the Philippines which has one of the highest unemployment rates in Southeast Asia and one of the highest poverty rates, with one-third of the population living below the poverty line.
Mass unemployment and social problems that often accompany large-scale joblessness could also take a toll on what is expected to be a tight presidential election next year to replace President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
JOB LOSSES
Working abroad has become a way of life in the Philippines. Millions leave every year to work overseas, mostly as domestic helpers, seafarers or caregivers, to support families back home.
Last year, 1.4 million Filipinos moved abroad for work, a daily deployment of close to 4,000 people. Due to high unemployment at home, the Philippine government has long championed the exodus of workers abroad, despite widespread disquiet of a drain of talent.
Arroyo calls these migrant workers "modern day heroes" because the money they send home has kept the Philippine economy afloat even in times of economic uncertainty.
But as the global economy faces its biggest downturn in decades with a slump in shipping and recessions in many of the countries that employ Filipino migrant workers, the Philippines may find itself particularly exposed.
Around 10 percent of the country's estimated 90 million population live abroad. Last year, they sent home a record $16.4 billion in remittances, a major pillar of the domestic economy. Continued...
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