BSP projections aiding illegal recruiters — FAME

MANILA, Philippines — Recruitment agencies warned the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) against making statements about the expected rise in remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in countries where the Philippine government has been negotiating for more job opportunities for them.

The Federated Association of Manpower Exporters (Fame) said the repeated statements announcing new markets in New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Japan and Guam as possible sources of dollar remittances was just giving more information to illegal recruitment syndicates that entice jobless Filipinos with the promise of high wages.

“The BSP statements are often misleading and give the impression that there are new markets that are being tapped by the government such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Taiwan and Guam,” Fame executive director Lito Soriano said in a statement.

He said that the BSP statements were mostly based on “old and repetitive” issuances by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).

Soriano noted that the POEA had not approved any new job orders up to now for Guam and that actual mobilization for the construction of a US military base on the island might only start in July 2010.

To lighten Okinawa’s load, Tokyo and Washington have agreed to relocate about 8,000 US Marines from Okinawa to Guam by 2014, but the US military says the plan cannot move forward until a new base in northern Okinawa is finished.

Prior to their eventual transfer to Guam, the US Marines are to relocate from the Futenma Air Station in southern Okinawa to Camp Schwab on the northern side. The relocation was agreed to by Japan and the US in 2006 but was later put on hold.

As for Australia, New Zealand and Canada, Soriano said the “real” situation was that the three countries were in recession and job orders had completely stopped.

In East Asia, Soriano said the POEA deployed only 30 caregivers and nurses to Japan on Sept. 27 while the South Korea trainee deployment has not reached even 4,000 in 2009. Taiwan’s special hiring program has only deployed less than a thousand for 2008 compared to the private sector, which deployed more than 40,000 factory worker and caregivers.

“Those markets have dried up and only the Middle East countries of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Libya where over two million Filipinos are concentrated are steadily increasing remittances flows,” Soriano said.

The recruitment executive, however, warned that the over 200,000 OFWs in Dubai, the second biggest source of remittances this year, were likely to send less next year because of the emirate’s debt crisis.

The BSP earlier said that in the first three quarters of the year, OFWs sent home through banks a total of $12.789 billion, up $516.62 million or 4.21 percent from the $12.273 billion in the same period in 2008.

The decline in remittances from the US was offset by the $1.38 billion sent by OFWs in Canada and the $588 million from Japan, which, respectively, were 56- and 57-percent higher compared to last year. - By Jerome Aning, Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 13, 2009