Press Release
December 4, 2008

Jinggoy pushes summit to address OFW layoffs
due to global financial crunch

The national government must call for an emergency summit to address the current and other potential massive layoffs of Filipino workers abroad due to the global economic slowdown.

This was pushed today by Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada, who chairs the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development, and the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Labor and Employment.

The senator noted the admission by the Department of Labor and Employment that the layoff trend is on the rise, as some 946 OFWs were reportedly retrenched from Taiwan's manufacturing industry; 75 from Western Australia's ship building industry; 300 from the casino-hotel industry of Macau, almost a hundred from the hotel industry of Italy; and 200 Filipino seafarers from different foreign vessels.

Independent accounts, particularly from the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) and Migrante International, showed that the number of OFWs displaced due to the crisis has actually reached thousands already.

There are apprehensions that so many others among the more than eight million Filipino workers abroad might be laid-off in the next weeks to come as more and more foreign companies had announced planned cutbacks on number of employees.

"This is a very serious situation however the government tries to downplay it. We are faced with a scenario where hundreds of thousands of overseas-based Filipinos might be forced to return to the country where they might not be able to find jobs either," Estrada lamented.

"We must hold an emergency summit to be participated in by concerned government agencies, local and foreign industry players as well as OFW groups to find ways to address the effects of the layoff trend, or at the minimum, to mitigate its impact," he added.

The senator said the situation is not as helpless as it seems, citing the availability of hundreds of thousands of jobs in several other foreign and local industries, provided that Filipino workers acquire the skills needed by such industries, and that the government directly assist in the workers' training or re-training and employment-matching.

Estrada said the summit could be spearheaded by his committee, together with the counterpart Labor and Employment Committee of the House of Representatives chaired by Valenzuela Congressman Magtanggol Gunigundo.

News Latest News Feed