Nathan Andrada’s Blog

Many Filipinos from abroad are coming home this December not because of the holidays but because they have been laid off from their work. Just recently, dozens of Filipino overseas workers were forced to pack their bags and left for home from Taiwan and Macau. In the previous month I was told by my mother that many people from our rural town came back home from China because the call center that they worked for there went out of business.

The ongoing economic and financial crisis has affected Filipino workers all over the world and this could mean peril for our economy. Their remittance dollars, which has been the lifeline of not only our overall economic health but also of our foreign reserve security, is seen to dramatically fall in the months to come. Technically, this will affect the strength of our currency which could trickle down to the competitiveness of our exported products and the national government’s ability to finance its external debt.

The effects on the lives of Filipino middle-class families, however, is much magnified. Income from our overseas workers are used to build homes and pay for children’s education, just to mention a few. When this dries up, it would be least to say catastrophic. Many of these workers are still ridden with debt brought by the high processing fees of their previous stint abroad. The lack of decent-paying work opportunities here in the Philippines is another reason why these workers dread the idea of even coming back home.

Foreign countries, where our OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) have been working, have their own problems dealing with the crisis and usually their initial response is protectionism. With this economic climate, their government and private sector are being pressed hard by their own constituents to prioritize locals over international workers like Filipinos in terms of jobs.

Our government, through the agencies that handle the welfare of our overseas workers, has to be ready for more reverse exodus of OFWs by allotting enough funds aimed at providing financial assistance to them.