ABANDONING his child is probably the worst thing a father can do. What is even more reprehensible is when he lets his neighbors steal his children’s bread.
For want of a better analogy, this is what I believe Malacañang has been doing to Filipino laborers who have not been offered jobs—but left with mere “crumbs”—in major infrastructure projects in the country that are funded by expensive loans from China. Chinese workers are doing jobs that local workers are very capable of doing. And yet, the Duterte administration sees nothing wrong in what it is doing. The reason, according to Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo, is that “there are not enough skilled Filipino workers here.”
I don’t know where Panelo gets his figures, but taking Filipino workers out of the employment loop does not sit well with the country’s labor force, which has built bridges and skyscrapers around the world, notably in the Middle East. Panelo reasoned that this is exactly why skilled Filipino workers needed in Chinese loan-funded projects can’t be found locally: They are abroad. The assertion is of course flawed and loosely spoken to justify the unjustifiable.
Last year, the Philippine Statistics Office (PSA) noted an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent. This means that there were 2.3 million Filipinos who were jobless. Pray tell: Out of this number, this administration cannot find a single soul who is qualified to do the jobs that Chinese workers could?
Around 51,000 of 115,652 alien employment permits have been granted to Chinese nationals between 2015 and 2017, records from the Department of Labor and Employment show. If we go by the provisions of the Philippine Labor Code, an alien employment permit can be given to a foreign worker only if there were no interested or competent Filipino to do the job.
A recent report by the research group IBON Foundation claims that President Rodrigo Duterte has created the lowest jobs statistics in two years since Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s. I’m sure Duterte apologists would again raise hell and dispute this number, but it is a fact—not fake news—that Duterte’s economic strategy is wobbly.
That the country’s growth rate receded to a three-year low in 2018 is undisputable. Duterte’s economic team still trumpets a 6.2-percent growth, which, I think, is nothing to sneeze at. But when your objective is to increase the income of Filipinos, moderating the gross domestic product is the last thing we need.
Duterte needs foreign direct investments to fund his “Build, Build, Build” credo, but these, too, are hard to come by. A slackening external sector makes it harder for us to export more Filipinos abroad to work and send remittances home. Sadly, focusing more on human capital by improving education and training has been neglected in favor of Duterte’s drug war.
The country is now swarmed with Chinese nationals, as confirmed by Senate Labor Committee Chairman Joel Villanueva who set out a formal inquiry a few months ago. The most alarming disclosure that came of the inquiry was that government officials are clueless on the quantity of illegal Chinese workers in the country and the number of jobs they were allowed to do, which the Constitution spells out should be exclusively for Filipinos.
The Senate committee also discovered that some 119,000 mainland Chinese nationals hold tourist visas but were given temporary employment through a circumvention of labor laws. They were able to secure special working permits from the Bureau of Immigration.
The Chinese invasion would not only bring chaos to the local job market. It would also create an artificial demand in property markets. Condominium rentals in the Manila Bay area, for instance, skyrocketed by 62 percent. Sen. Villanueva noted that a post by a real-estate agent looking for 400 condo units for 3,300 Chinese workers in Muntinlupa City recently went viral. Sen. Grace Poe also narrated that some Chinese were able to purchase the entire floors of condominiums that they fancied. Such frivolous demand is inimical to local average wage earners.
According to Villanueva, some immigration agents demand P5,000 to rush a work permit without issuing receipts. He was surprised to find many Chinese citizens during a recent visit to SM Mall of Asia. “I thought I was in China,” he said.
The Duterte administration was able to generate only 162,000 jobs in 2017 and 2018, the lowest after the Marcos era. PSA records show that the annual average of 81,000 jobs is less than 1 percent of the 1 million jobs the current administration has promised to create. It is also the lowest yearly average after the Marcos regime.
PSA records also revealed that the government of the late president Corazon Aquino created 810,000 jobs between 1987 and 1992 or an annual average of 135,000, while the Ramos administration generated 489,000 from 1993 to 1998, or an average of 81,500. Former President Joseph Estrada produced 842,000 jobs between 1999 and 2001, or an average of 280,667. His successor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, produced 764,000 from 2002 to 2010, or 84,889 a year, while former President Benigno Aquino III created 827,000 jobs, or about 137,833 a year.
Congressman Ariel “Ka Ayik” Casilao of Anak Pawis party-list decried the Duterte administration for preferring Chinese workers over Filipinos. “The Palace claims that Filipinos lack skills, [and] that is why it prefers Chinese migrant workers, [which] is highly insulting to us. Our workers have proven their excellence in different fields of work in so many countries, be it as a construction worker, IT technician or domestic helper. Name it, and there is an overseas Filipino worker who excels in it,” he said.
But Duterte, who believes and trusts China to defend him from ouster, has practically conceded Philippine sovereignty to our giant neighbor. It wouldn’t be farfetched to think that China will soon conquer us, without firing a single shot.
For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com