By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo / Special to the BusinessMirror
PRIVATE groups and individuals have stepped up to offer work and conduct job fairs for the 36,000 workers on Boracay Island who have lost their livelihood due to the island’s closure.
Ana Treñas, who once worked as a digital marketing professional on the island, has set up a Facebook page called “Jobs Beyond Boracay” to help alert jobless island workers to vacancies in hotels and resorts in other destinations.
She told the BusinessMirror, “I’ve lived in Boracay for five years, so I know these people—the hotel staff, the waitstaff, etc. And it’s sad; these are 36,000 workers who are losing, or have lost their jobs. I felt so bad for these people. So I put up this site and through the help of a philanthropist friend, she connected me to people [who have job vacancies].”
So far, she said, there have been about 1,000 available jobs that have been posted on her site from hotels in Cebu, Clark and Subic, for all types of hotel workers, such as those in housekeeping, plumbing, bookkeeping, etc. “Bai Hotel, a five-star hotel in Cebu, said they needed hundreds and hundreds of employees,” having just newly opened, Treñas noted.
She has also been reposting the job openings on the Boracay community pages, to help connect the displaced workers with prospective employers. “I’m not making money from this,” she stressed, although Treñas admitted she has been approached by manpower agencies that wanted to make money by offering jobs to people on the island. “I don’t want that; as long as there is a need, we will keep this site open for people to post jobs to those who need them.”
President Duterte ordered the closure of Boracay Island for six months starting on April 26, to give way to the government’s rehabilitation efforts, which include an environmental cleanup, clearing of easement violators and construction of vital infrastructure.
The Department of Labor and Employment has said it can only provide emergency employment aid to 5,000 of the 36,000 workers who have lost their jobs. The cash-for-work program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, on the other hand, pays less than P300 per day to the island’s informal sector, many of whom had earned more than Metro Manila’s minimum wage from tourism activities.
Meanwhile, representatives of several hotels and resorts, travel agencies, and tourism associations in and off-island under the loose aggrupation called “#OneBoracay,” also conducted a job fair on the island on April 16 at Paradise Garden Resort, where 4,000 jobs in several tourism-related companies were offered.
Mia Mancio, a hotel sales manager and a prime mover of #OneBoracay, said there were some 30 people who attended the job fair, while another 50 “registered for online job matching in cooperation with Jobstreet.com,” a popular online job-recruitment portal.
#OneBoracay also printed shirts with the group’s name to help raise funds for those in the informal sector now disenfranchised because of the island’s closure. She added about P30,000 had been initially raised from the sales of the P500 shirts, and already sent to six families in Boracay.
“The group started out informally, via group chat, before Boracay was closed,” Mancio narrated. “Most of us were directors of sales and marketing of hotels, and we just wanted our voices to be heard regarding the closure.” Sales and marketing professionals are usually the frontliners when promoting their hotels and accommodations to tourists, and are the ones who carry the burden of cancellations, rebookings and approving refunds for those who cancel bookings.
One of the first activities, she noted, was a news conference in March, to propose a delay in the closure of the island, bring the concerns of the informal workers to national attention, and mitigate the negative impact of the government’s rehabilitation effort, among others (See, “Boracay closure could lead to government loss of P6.7 billion in taxes,” in the BusinessMirror, March 22, 2018.)
The group tapped the Hotel Sales and Marketing Association International Inc. (HSMA) to help formally represent them at the news conference and other events. “We wanted to show our love for Boracay and for the thousands of workers that will be displaced due to the closure,” HSMA President Christine U. Ibarreta said.
“We then had a beach cleanup on April 16, which was supported by a number of hotels and other tourism industry representatives, and at the same time, the job fair,” Mancio said. “These are 30,000 plus workers who are going to lose their jobs; we just wanted to help our fellow workers in the industry,” she added.
She said while many sales and marketing colleagues have not formally come out to join the group due to company restrictions, they have expressed support for its aims. “They’ve helped, for instance, by selling the t-shirts,” Mancio said. Several celebrities and politicians have also backed the group by buying the shirts, like Piolo Pascual, Nadine Lustre, James Reid, Sen. Joel J. Villanueva, Giselle Sanchez, Diana Meneses, Ogie Alcaside and Regine Velasquez, to name a few.
Mancio said the group’s advocacy to help the families of displaced workers will continue. The group will also look at helping those workers in the formal sector who may need assistance to tide their families over while the island is closed.
#OneBoracay t-shirts are available at 0917-855-1163 and 0917-714-5084.
Image credits: Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo