Recto warns against hiring foreigners in projects with ‘tied loans’

The Philippines should insist on a “hire-local policy” to prevent waves of foreigners from taking over jobs as part of “tied loans” with countries like China, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said on Monday.

Recto said the country should not accept “any bias against local labor.”

“We have many returning OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) who can fill the slots and do the job. No loan should discriminate against Filipino talent. We should insist on a hire-local policy,” the senator said in a statement.

Funder ‘preferences’

Recto cautioned the executive against entering into so-called tied loans, in which “preferences by the funder are institutionalized in loan contracts.”

10 million jobless

The government should reject those with “high imported labor content,” he said.

He cited a Social Weather Stations survey that showed close to 10 million Filipinos were jobless in September.

“[Optics] will not be good” if the government would allow the mass entry of foreign workers to take jobs in the construction sector “even if this is a condition imposed by a funder of tied loans,” Recto said.

He did not name any country, but critics had raised concerns that Chinese loans for Philippine infrastructure programs might be tied with provisions for the hiring of Chinese laborers.