Low-skilled workers are the top remitters

manilatimes.net
Sunday, August 16, 2009

Low-skilled overseas workers are the country’s top senders of money from abroad.

Women domestic workers, by the number, are also the topmost deployed overseas workers even if they may have earned smaller salaries and send home lesser amounts of remittances compared to other overseas workers.

According to the Institute for Migration and Development Issues (IMDI), male plant and machine operators and assemblers, male trades and related workers, and female laborers and unskilled workers are the country’s top remitters.

The non-profit organization cites the annual Survey on Overseas Filipinos (SOF) of the National Statistics Office, which shows that male plant and machine operators and assemblers remitted P14.543 billion in 2007, up from P7.927 billion in 2001.

These workers were the top remitters from 2001 to 2004 and in 2007.

Female workers

While female laborers and unskilled workers were the second-highest group of remitters by volume in the annual survey, this category of female migrant workers is the leader among female overseas workers. Female laborers and unskilled workers sent home P13.082 billion in 2007, up from P6.452 in 2001.

Yet, female service workers doing domestic work are the leading overseas workers by total number, according to the institute, citing 15-year data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) on deployed new-hire overseas workers by gender, skill and country of destination.

The data on new-hire overseas workers by the agency show that domestic helpers and related household workers, choreographers and dancers and composers, musicians and singers—all females—are also the leading Filipino workers deployed abroad.

The topmost groups of skilled workers are female nurses, followed by male engineers (electrical and electronics) and technicians.

Low-skilled or semi-skilled overseas workers’ regular remittance transfers that benefit their immediate families make them the “major driver of the country’s remittance economy,” according to the Institute for Migration and Development Issues.

Global trend

This trend reflects the fact that job opportunities in developed countries call for semi-skilled or low-skilled workers so that host country nationals can actively participate in their country’s labor force.

The institute recommended that measures to support and protect the rights and welfare of these low-skilled workers should be put in place. They should have access to various forms of legal redress when they are abused.

“They [low-skilled workers] remit frequently [though in lesser amounts], they also try out micro-to-small enterprises, and had to repay debts incurred prior to their migration overseas,” according to the institute.