THE long awaited and frequently rescheduled visit of Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas to the Kingdom is finally taking place from today, when she arrives in Riyadh.
Unfortunately for OFWs, according to sources in Manila her trip is being billed as a reciprocal one, meaning that she is returning the visit of Saudi Minister of Labor Dr. Ali Al-Namlah. Sto. Tomas allegedly has only a few minutes penciled in for OFW leaders during her trip.
While official visits are important for all national governments, the Philippines is in the unique position of being one of the countries that counts human resources as one of its major exports. With the largest single concentration of OFWs anywhere in the world except for the United States, the Philippine government should pay special attention to the needs of its workers in Saudi Arabia.
Undoubtedly, the rapid pace of Saudization that the Kingdom has adopted has affected thousands of Filipino workers who have seen themselves lose their jobs through early retirement. Other Filipinos have faced ruder treatment, simply being terminated to make way for a Saudi worker. For sure, most Filipinos do not hold grudges against Saudis for taking up jobs in their own country, but many have been caught unawares by the speed of the Saudization process.
Rani, a Filipino friend of mine, is a good example. Once a machine operator at a multinational’s pharmaceutical plant in Jeddah, Rani made more than $1,000 a month with overtime. This is a salary that no machine operator could ever dream of making back home in the Philippines. Then last year Rani was laid off because of Saudization. He now tells me that 50 percent of the factory floor at his former employer is Saudi. Eight months later, Rani is still looking for a new job and hasn’t found one yet because Saudis are being hired first before foreigners.
I’m sure Sto. Tomas and other Filipino officials saw this coming a long time ago, but as usual the impact of its reality didn’t hit home until the policy began to be implemented and take hold. To deal with this aggressive Saudization policy, Philippine and Saudi officials will have to sit down together and study where best Filipino labor and skills can now be utilized.
The labor secretary would do well to also sit down with the Filipino community in Riyadh and Jeddah and discuss their concerns, one of which is the much-maligned $25 OWWA membership fee that all OFWs are required to pay, in addition to the 900-peso (about $18) yearly insurance premium.
Sto. Tomas should also press the Saudi government to speed up the return home of stranded Filipino workers, who roam the streets of Riyadh without jobs, money or any hope. Better yet, Sto. Tomas should ask to meet with groups of stranded workers so that she can see their plight with her own eyes. She could then personally plead their case with Labor Minister Al-Namlah, who I’m sure would give her a positive answer to her concerns.
There is no reasonable reason why abandoned Filipino workers should be left in limbo on the streets of the Kingdom for months on end. Most I suspect have fallen through the bureaucratic cracks, so to speak, and have since been ignored. A little official attention from the Saudi government, the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, the Labor Department and OWWA would go a long way in solving their problems and bringing them home swiftly.
THE massive eight-hour blackout that hit Luzon on Tuesday morning while not surprising was both embarrassing and stupid. How many times does the Philippines have to be hit by a crippling blackout before the National Power Corp. (Napocor) gets it right?
Blackouts have occurred in other countries that I have lived in, namely Brazil, the US and Switzerland, but they lasted at most an hour and were usually limited to a specific area, not to the entire Luzon area as happens in the Philippines.
Why does the whole Luzon power grid have to be interconnected, so that when a problem occurs in a transmission line somewhere in Laguna it triggers an island-wide shut down of power? Cannot Napocor just shut down a small portion of its grid, leaving the rest to buzz along with enough juice to keep everything working? With the nation having a surplus of power after all those contracts were signed with Independent Power Producers in the Ramos years, a sudden surge in electricity demand cannot be blamed for the blackout.
Striking at 11 a.m. on a week day, the blackout meant that schools sent students home early, along with the Supreme Court, government offices and factories all shutting down for the day. This means that nearly a whole day of productivity was lost, not to mention the traffic snarls caused by traffic lights knocked out of action, and the aggravation caused to thousands of commuters stranded on the two light railway systems in Manila.
Although the Philippines has some of the best engineers in the world, it still cannot get its electricity transmission right. What’s wrong? Is it massive corruption that has screwed up the power system? Or is it sabotage by the communist New People’s Army? If geographically huge countries like Brazil can get it right, I don’t see why the Philippines can’t do the same. This is beyond the realm of being a banana republic. This is sheer incompetence!
Regards to all the young OFW groups in Jeddah who held fund-raising events for Bantay Bata last week, especially to Liza, Cris, Jaya, John and Marvin.
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