Statement from Rep. Edcel C. Lagman
Special Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs
Delivered by Atty. Christopher Lomibao
With 35,000 overseas workers deployed in the 1970s during Martial Law, presumably as a stop-gap measure to generate employment and foreign exchange, the exportation of Filipino Workers has been a continuing national policy despite trade-offs in social costs.
Statistics document that 10 percent of the 84 million Philippine population are working in over 190 foreign countries in various employment as engineers, doctors, nurses, caregivers, teachers, farmers, seafarers, stenographers, hairdressers, crane operators, bricklayers, pipe layers, domestic helper, entertainers and cooks. Some even dive for sea urchins in Eritrea where it is illegal to harvest sea urchins. There are also about 1,000 Filipino workers in Diego Garcia, a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
The variety of work engaged in by OFWs is a testament to the skills, expertise and ingenuity of Filipinos. But it is also an indictment of government’s culpable neglect in not providing job opportunities for Filipino workers of innate capabilities.
The high unemployment (11 percent) and underemployment (18 percent) rates and low wages drive our workers overseas. The country exports annually close to 900,000 skilled and semi-skilled workers making the Philippines the world’s top exporter of labor according to the International Labour Organization (ILO) as of November this year.
The OFWs who have been heralded as the bagong bayani are now considered the backbone of the economy. They religiously remit more than $7-B annually, which is equivalent to 11 percent of GDP of a country where half the population lives on $2/day. The BSP expects OFW remittances to reach a record $8.1-B this year.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has an even higher estimate of dollar remittances from OFWs through both formal and informal channels of between $14-B and $21 billion annually.
OFW remittances have been the engine of growth of the Philippine economy since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. Through their monthly remittances, domestic consumption spending has grown much faster than the overall economy-an average of 4.0 percent since 1997 versus an average GDP growth of only 3.7 percent. More importantly, remittances have been a source of stability for the country. If not for this money flow, we estimate that GDP would have contracted by an average of 1.5 percent in the past three years.
OFW remittances surpass foreign investments. According to the CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets Research in February 2004, annual remittances are three times higher than foreign direct investment (FDI).
Available data show the following profile of OFWs:
• 65 percent of all OFWs are women.
• 10,000 Filipino doctors have shifted to nursing for employment abroad.
• Filipino nurses earn 20 times higher if they work overseas: $75,000 or P4,193,280/year.
• Teachers’ paychecks in the Philippines are half of that of a domestic helper in Hong Kong.
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