MANILA – President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said she has allocated 250 million pesos ($5.2 million) for livelihood and training assistance for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who are likely to be displaced by the global economic crunch.
At the same time, Arroyo endorsed the establishment of a 100-billion-peso ($20.8 billion) fund from both public and private sectors to help shield the Philippine economy and the Filipino people from a possible recession in the United States.
Speaking at a function before she left Thursday for a five-day working visit to China, mainly to attend a gathering of Asian and European leaders to find measures to address the financial turmoil sweeping the world, Arroyo said her government has allocated the fund for OFWs even if there is no threat of displacement. Called the Expatriate Livelihood Support Fund, the project seeks to provide reserve money for returning Filipinos.
Arroyo said this is only one among other measures to assist OFWs affected by the global crisis. Returning OFWs could also avail themselves of their government’s livelihood and business formation program. She said her government is setting up a reintegration center to provide business counseling to OFWs.
The President said Philippine authorities will conduct a “24/7 heightened monitoring of overseas labor market displacements,” including the monitoring of job orders for possible decrease in overseas labor demand. “We will register our workers so we can get track of them and we will redeploy them to emerging labor markets. We continue to identify and develop new market niches and we assist in repatriation,” she said.
Arroyo assured Filipinos, however, that there is no threat of labor displacement related to the present financial crisis.
She said the jobs of some 2 million Filipinos in the Middle East remain secure and stable. The same is true with the jobs of some 500,000 OFWs in Europe, she added.
She said the Philippines is also expecting continued increase in employment opportunities in the Middle East in addition to some 30,000 current job opportunities in Canada in the next two years. Also, some 30,000 jobs in Australia await Filipinos, another 10,000 in New Zealand and 20,000 in Guam. Explaining further Arroyo’s plans, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Arroyo’s cabinet will draw up “emergency work programs and livelihood programs targeting the poor -- and also to some extent, the middle and lower middle classes.”