New overseas hires drop 29% - DOLE

MANILA, Philippines - Fewer Filipino workers are now getting hired abroad contrary to the government’s claim, the recruitment industry said yesterday.

Recruitment industry leaders said the number of newly hired workers in various countries has dramatically dropped due to the economic crisis.

“Against the consistent claims of the government of a 27 percent increase in deployment, the number of new hires or new jobs generated went down by 29.2 percent,” recruitment official Emmanuel Geslani said.

Geslani said data that they gathered from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) show the real situation that the industry is experiencing at this time.

“The true situation is that the recruitment industry is now suffering from reduced deployment in all markets, including Saudi Arabia,” Geslani said.

He said the number of new hires in Saudi Arabia, the country’s biggest market, dropped by 21.4 percent while United Arab Emirates (UAE) only posted 0.5 percent increase.

“The entire Middle East market, which counts as the major market for our laborers’ deployment, dropped by 16 percent from 200,309 in 2007 to 163,120 in 2008,” he added.

Asia accounted for the largest drop of 53 percent from 71,913 in 2007 to 33,565 in 2008, mainly on losses in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Overall, the deployment for new hires (land-based) dropped by 29.2 percent from 306,383 in 2007 to 216,803 in 2008.

Geslani said the recruitment industry has constantly questioned the reported 1.37 million deployments last year, since there is no basis for such a figure when agencies have suffered a decline in hiring.

He said the POEA processed fewer contracts in 2008 than in 2007, or a drop of 19 percent.

“So there can be no plausible reason for an increase of deployment. The contracts processed do not reconcile and the huge difference may be attributed to inaccurate counting of workers leaving through the NAIA who may be illegal workers using falsified e-receipts,” he said.

POEA claims that its deployment data were based on reports coming from the Ninoy Aquino International Airports (NAIA) and other international airports.

But the recruitment industry said the POEA has no direct way of accurately validating and recording genuine POEA-processed OFW deployment since it has no personnel assigned at the international airports.

“The POEA is relying on manual counting and tallying exit clearances by the airline counters, airport terminal fee and/or immigration counters for its deployment data which we believe are incorrect and lead to inflated deployment figures, including undocumented or falsely documented OFWs leaving the country daily without the proper protection of the POEA and OWWA (Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration),” Geslani said.