More than one million Filipino workers ranging from domestic helpers to doctors, engineers and pilots joined the growing army of Filipinos employed overseas last year, according to official data.
The Philippine Overseas Employment
Administration says more than eight million Filipinos, about one tenth of the
country’s 86 million population, were working in 194 countries and territories
around the world from tiny Palau in the Pacific to Equatorial Guinea in Africa.
The Philippines has become one of the
world’s biggest exporters of workers, whose income now plays a central role in
the country’s economy.
The Philippines has become one of the
world’s biggest exporters of workers and now constitutes one of the biggest
sectors of the country’s economy. Attracted by higher wages, the exodus is fast
draining the Philippines of its skilled professional workforce such as teachers
and nurses.
According to the World Health
Organization (WHO), nurses and other medical workers are leaving the
Philippines at the rate of at least 15,000 a year for better-paying jobs
abroad, threatening the country’s health infrastructure. Jean Marc Olive, WHO
country representative, warned that the exodus was expected to persist until at
least 2015, with annual demand for medical workers in the United States and
Europe estimated to be about 800,000.
In sectors such as aviation, pilots and
engineers are being poached to meet the demand of the world’s rapidly expanding
airline industry.
Some 250,447 Filipinos make up one of the
biggest sectors of the world’s merchant navy, while in countries like Hong Kong
and Singapore they constitute the bulk of domestic workers.
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