Marketing blitz launched for OFWs

BY JOCELYN MONTEMAYOR

PRESIDENT Arroyo yesterday ordered the Philippine Overseas Employment Association to conduct a "marketing blitz" to give Filipino workers, especially those displaced by the global economic crisis, better access to job opportunities abroad.

Arroyo said she would issue an administrative order on the plan to help find new "markets" for the Filipino workers.

Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said 50,000 Filipinos working abroad might be displaced by world crisis. There are about 8 million overseas workers.

Arroyo spoke at the launching in Malacañang of the "payback package" dubbed the "Handog ni Pangulong Arroyo para sa Displaced Expatriate Filipino Workers."

She with the world financial crisis, it is for the government to pay back the Filipinos working and living abroad, whose remittances have been propping the Philippine economy.

She said the "marketing blitz" is only one of the measures drawn up by the government to help returning Filipinos find new jobs.

Roque said some 1,000 jobs in the hotel and restaurant industry business in Bulgaria are now open for Filipinos. In Saudi Arabia, there are 90,000 job vacancies, he said.

Roque said there are also job openings in New Zealand, Canada, Guam and even Taiwan where Filipino workers were retrenched this week.

Arroyo also ordered the setting up an online information system on job vacancies and of assistance desks in all provincial offices of the labor department, and skills and livelihood training and financial assistance under the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, the Technology Resource Center and the National Reintegration Center for OFWs.

Roque said OFWs who have undergone training can apply for a maximum loan of P10,000 from National Livelihood Support Fund. The labor department has yet to complete the guidelines for the support fund which is funded by OWAA (P200 million) and the national government (P50 million).

Roque said among the recipients of the "payback package" are the 102 retrenched OFWs who were production workers in Taiwan.

They were given OFW Club Family cards by the Social Security System, which entitle them to priority processing of claims as well as trade discounts.