Filipino diaspora continues — DOLE

It’s an exodus beyond Biblical proportions.

An average of 2,748 Filipinos leave the country each day for jobs overseas, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said yesterday.

Acting Labor Secretary Arturo Brion said this marked an increase over the average of 2,551 departures registered in the same period last year.

There are some five million Filipinos working overseas and the money they send back to their relatives in the Philippines is a major source of foreign exchange for the cash-strapped country.

Filipinos working overseas remitted $6.23 billion to the Philippines last year, a 3.05 percent increase from 2000.

Brion said data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration showed that 280,882 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) – 219,132 land-based workers and 61,750 seafarers – left for jobs abroad after being hired or re-hired between Jan. 1 to April 17, 2002.

POEA Administrator Rosalinda Baldoz said that 2,045 land-based workers were deployed daily on the average as of April 17, surpassing the 1,996 daily average deployment in the same period last year.

On the other hand, departing seafarers averaged 703 daily as of April 17, compared to 554 last year.

Baldoz said that there is a continued and marked demand and preference abroad for veteran overseas Filipino workers.

She said that of the 219,132 land-based Filipino workers deployed around the world as of April 17, 67 percent or 146,367 were re-hired, and 33 percent or 72,765 are newly-hired.

There are some five million Filipinos working overseas and the money they send back to their relatives in the Philippines is a major source of foreign exchange for the cash-strapped country.

In an earlier report, DOLE said Filipinos working overseas remitted $6.23 billion to the Philippines last year, a 3.05 increase from 2000.

Some $3.3 billion was sent home by Filipinos working in the US and Canada in 2001, a 17.5 percent reduction from the previous year. Remittances from Europe also fell by 24.22 percent to $405.1 million.

However, the fall from these regions were made up the increase from other places like Asia, where remittances grew by 26.19 percent to $1.04 billion. Remittances from the Middle East improved 19.8 percent to $711.81 million.

The POEA said remittances from land-based workers was steady at $5.14 billion while those from seafarers rose by 17.98 percent to $1.09 billion. – Sandy Araneta