Gov’t eyes other labor markets for maids

Government is eyeing Hong Kong, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates as new labor markets for maids who may lose their jobs in Saudi Arabia.

Filipino household service workers (HSWs) affected by the Saudi deployment ban can be absorbed by other labor markets or, they can work as sales workers, waitress, and other low-skilled jobs in the country, a labor official said on Tuesday.

Nicon Fameronag, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) spokesperson, also clarified that the official records put the number of Filipinos HSWs in Saudi Arabia at 18,789 as of July 4 (not hundreds of thousands as some reports imply).

“The active (Overseas Workers Welfare Administration) members who are HSWs in Saudi Arabia number 18,789 as of July 4-17,814 are female and 975 are male,” said Fameronag.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) also said that around 7,000 Filipino domestics destined for Saudi Arabia were not able to leave the country after the Saudis stopped the verification of their contracts in March.

Fameronag said that other labor markets could absorb affected HSWs, noting that the Saudi labor market for Filipino domestics only ranked fourth in 2010 with 11,582 new hires.

The Saudi market also only accounted for around 12 percent of 96,583 Filipino domestics who were newly hired last year, he added.

He said the top three labor markets for Filipino HSWs in 2010 were Hong Kong, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Fameronag also noted that the number of new hires in these three markets continuously rose in the last three years. For Hong Kong, 18,286 were hired in 2008; 24,998 in 2009; and 28,602 in 2010.

In Kuwait, 8,092 were hired in 2008; 14,087 in 2009; and 21,554 in 2010. For UAE, 6,403 were hired in 2008, 10,558 in 2009, and 13,184 in 2010, Fameronag said.

However, migrant groups said Kuwait and the UAE are not OFW friendly and many of the problems experienced in Saudi Arabia, such as domestic slavery, are also reported there.

The other markets for HSWs, according to Fameronag, were Qatar (9,937 hired in 2010), Singapore (2,848), Bahrain (1,714), Oman (1,564), Cyprus (1,549) and Italy (1,223), he added.

All these countries recorded growth in the number of Filipino maids deployed except for Italy, where the number of new hires dropped from a high of 4,951 in 2007; to 2,839 in 2008; 1,793 in 2009; and 1,223 last year.

He said the government was improving its labor websites, particularly PHILJobNet, so that affected HSWs could find work in the country.

“Around 54.8 percent of the 54,000 jobs available on PhilJobNet are for those who are unskilled, low-skilled, or semi-skilled. Our HSWs could take advantage of these,” Fameronag said.

He said these low-skilled jobs included production workers, sales clerks, data encoders, baggers, copying machine operators, and waitresses.

“They also get free training to improve their jobs or start their own business,” Fameronag said.

He said returning OFWs could, with the help of OWWA, take out “collateral-free” loans worth P200,000 to P2 million from the Land Bank of the Philippines or the Development Bank of the Philippines to start their own business.