Only 1 out of 5 workers employed by Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (Pogos) is a Filipino, according to data from various government agencies that the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) will validate.
During a hearing on the DOLE’s budget at the House of Representatives last week, Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III disclosed that 16 percent, or 13,856 of the 83,999 workers in 60 POGOs licensed by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) are Filipinos as of June.
Foreign nationals accounted for the bulk of Pogo employees. Of the 70,130 foreigners in Pogos, 88.8 percent, or 61,878 are Chinese since these gaming operators cater to Chinese clients abroad.
POGOs also employed Vietnamese (1,909), Taiwanese (1,674), Indonesians (1,589), Malaysians (1,385) and Thais (572).
DOLE’s Bureau of Local and Employment (BLE) Director Dominique R. Tutay said this is based on initial data submitted by other government agencies, which issues work permits to foreign nationals.
“We will commence validation inspection after training the new labor inspectors for this purpose,” Tutay told the BusinessMirror via SMS.
Pinoys in Pogos
The government said it is looking into plans to increase the participation of workers in Pogos.
In a phone interview, Bello told the BusinessMirror that the DOLE is now coordinating with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority to provide language skills training to Filipinos so they could qualify for POGO jobs.
He said the DOLE is on the lookout for any private sector group that would like to help the government increase the employment of Filipinos in POGOs.
“We are preparing for this since our workers would eventually have to take over [the Pogo jobs],” Bello said.
Tutay said an interested party has met with the DOLE on the matter, but she said talks are still in the exploratory stage.
“We will call for a meeting with Pagcor relative to this and other concerns of Filipino workers in the Pogo industry,” she said.
Special work permits
Earlier this year, some lawmakers blamed the supposed lax issuance of Special Work Permits (SWP) by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) for the surge in the number of foreign nationals in the Philippines.
This resulted in the issuance last May of a new interagency policy, which banned foreign nationals in Pogo companies from applying for SWPs. Instead, they were required to get an Alien Employment Permit (AEP) from the DOLE.
An AEP is much harder to obtain than an SWP since its applicants would have to go through the labor market test. It also allows foreign nationals to work for longer than six months in the country, while an SWP is only good for six months.
Tutay said the policy was effective in cutting down the number of SWPs holders from 86,880 during the first semester of 2019 to just “hundreds” as of August.
From January to July, AEP applications rose to 52,450 from last year’s record of 24,286.