School kindles OFW kids’ knack for life

by RUBY ANNE R. PASCUA
www.ofwjournalism.net

Skills such as cooking and using the computer are taught in the Palihan (workshop) program of the Erda Tech Foundation, which allows out-of-school children who have parents working overseas a means to express their creativity.
OFWJC / Ruby Anne R. Pascua
MANILA – IN THIS school, students are allowed to stare across the window to daydream during classes.
That’s how some students like Cathyrine Tamayo and Ginesa Patalinhog get their motivation to stay out of the streets and stay in this school called Erda Tech.
For Tamayo and Patalinhog, both 17 years old, their dreams bring them to the places where their fathers are: thousands of miles overseas.
But instead of feeling sorry because of the separation and over the poverty that pushed their fathers to leave for work abroad, the two are allowed to express their dreams through creative means.
Tamayo loves to paint, using watercolor as medium. Patalinhog does, too. She is also a member of the school’s dance club while both are part of a group of young artists.
Erda administrator Wilhelmina Martinez said the school’s program called Palihan (workshop, in English) has been effective through such method of tapping into the students’ creativity because “we are also cultivating in them their personality and work attitude.”
“We found out that if we give adequate skills preparation to these children, mold them to have the right work attitude and have them all geared up to work hand-in-hand with other people, they will really be ready for employment,” Martinez added.
In a country where the number of high school dropouts and out-of-school youth are increasing in numbers, Erda Tech offers a fresh take in training young people like Tamayo and Patalinhog to traverse the social costs of the country’s overseas labor export program.
A study by F. K. Coronel and F. Unterreiner for the United Nations Children Fund cited that because “migration involves the separation of one or both parents from their children …therefore [it] goes against the best interest of the children.”
The paper titled “Towards a greater impact of remittances on children’s rights realization,” estimates that there are “about 3.75 million (Filipino) children left behind by their fathers.”
“These yield a total of 5.25 million children left behind by migrant mothers and fathers,” the paper, released last May, said.

For full story, visit the OFWJC's Website.

A Reader's Comments

I would like to share with your readers my experience here at the Maltese Consulate to the Philippines.

Having come here from the Philippines as a business woman with capital and projects to manufacture handicrafts in Malta, I went to the consulate in the hope that they would help me in my endeavors. Very soon I noticed and learned that they were charging Filipinos a fee for a single signature, endorsement, or visa extension. Now I have absolute proof that the consulate's intervention was not needed for the issue or extension of a visa to stay in Malta since this was at the discretion of the immigration department in Malta following a request by the Philippine Consulate in Manila.

Besides this, one of my clients, a Maltese, wanted to visit my factory in the Philippines and after he enquired at the consulate, he was told that a visa was required and charged him over 30 liri for it, when in fact none was needed. When I brought this up with the consulate here, they just laughed.

It seems that the consulate wants to control anything which Filipinos residing in Malta are doing so that they can charge fees for their imposed intervention.

Because I spoke up and made it amply clear that I did not think it was fair for my compatriots to be treated in this manner, I was shouted at, verbally thrown out of the office and told in very crude language that he could do what he liked and that no one could touch him. I filmed the whole meeting on my DigiCam.

A few inquiries over the Internet, however, revealed that the Consul to the Philippines in Malta's term had expired on the 3rd of February 2007.

On the local newspaper, there was a call for all Filipinos in Malta to attend the Celebration of the Anniversary of Independence Day in the Philippines which was held last Sunday in Valletta.

I printed all the relative documentation which proved that the consulate was an “EX” and went to the venue in the hope of informing all the bona fide Filipinos there that they were no longer obliged to contribute to the Consul's coffers given that he was no longer their representative. Moreover, I insisted that he had no right to rally Filipinos to celebrate their Independence Day in Malta when in fact he was not any more connected to the consulate. I also objected to his flying my country's flag outside his office.

Once again, I was told to please leave, that my presence there was not welcome.

I would like all the press here to get their nose onto this in the hope that if any injustices have been suffered by Filpinos in Malta, some form of compensation or remedial action will be forthcoming.


Susana E.Higayon,
President
SuhiroMalta Limited

Remittances Help Foil Asia Crisis Repeat, World Bank Study Says

BY ISAGANI DE LA PAZ

MANILA—ACROSS the East Asia region sweeps the wind of prosperity and cash remittances as well as knowledge capital by migrant workers has helped economies become more robust a decade after a devastating crisis.
Aside from the Philippines, the World Bank cited remittances from workers overseas also helped other countries like Vietnam and Mongolia to beef up cash reserves. Hence, remittances could soften and may even foil a repeat of the 1997 Asian crisis –if ever there would be one in the near future.
“A decade after the financial crisis that devastated East Asia in 1997-98, the region is far wealthier, has fewer poor people and a larger global role than ever before. Led by continued strong growth in China, Emerging East Asia now has an aggregate output of over $5 trillion, double the dollar value just before the crisis,” said the WB report titled “Ten Years after the Crisis”.
The report noted that the economies affected by the crisis: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Korea, and Thailand, posted real per capita incomes “significantly” exceeding pre-crisis levels.
The WB noted that the first three economies achieved real per capita income growth of 3-3.5 percent, “with per-capita growth in Korea and Thailand averaging 4-4.5 percent” in the four years ending 2006.
The cause, in particular with the Philippines, is consumption or the purchase of consumers by what the country’s factories produce, retailers sell, and businesses import-for-sale from abroad.
“Consumers in the Philippines also increased real expenditures by 5-6 percent, supported in part by a 20-percent rise in remittances from abroad,” the WB said.
Compared with Thailand's 3.2-percent consumer-demand growth last year, the Philippines posted a 5.5-percent growth from just 4.9 percent in 2005. Both countries are regarded as developing economies compared to the four newly industrialized economies of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, China.
The bank noted that remittances, coupled with the strong performance of the Philippines’s electronics exports, “far outweighed the impact of higher imported oil prices on the current account”.
The country’s current account –available cash for loans, payment of debts, for investments, and others flowing in the system- jumped to a US$5-billion surplus last year from US$2 billion in 2005.
The percentage increase (to US$12.8 billion in 2006) in remittances, the WB added, underscores the vital role played by money from Filipinos working abroad.
“Through these flows [remittances and transfers for the balance of payments], which together account for over 13 percent of GDP [gross domestic product], large trade deficits have been transformed into current account surpluses, which in 2006 grew to over four percent of GDP,” the bank said.
A trade deficit would mean the Philippines buys more products from other countries than what it sells or exports.
Remittances may be one of the reasons why the Philippines, along with Korea and Malaysia, quickly “regained their pre-crisis level of per-capita income by 1999, while this took longer, till 2003, in Indonesia and Thailand,” according to the WB report.

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IMF Team Affirms Weak Links Between OFW Money, Investment

BY JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

MANILA—A TEAM from the International Monetary Fund observed that remittances from an estimated eight million Filipinos abroad have not led to increased investments.

Ever since the country’s investment ratio has steadily declined since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, increasing remittances “has not increased investment,” IMF’s Ayako Fujita and Srikant Seshadri wrote in a policy analysis paper of selected Philippine economic issues done by a six-person IMF team.

IMF’s Country Report 07/131 (released last March) analyzed selected economic issues such as reforms in the value added tax law, an analysis of the economic contributions of the services sector, and credit growth and bank balance sheets in the Philippines.

Both Fujita and Seshadri were part of a six-person team that consulted Philippine economic planning and finance officials last January as part of the lender’s periodic consultations with countries.The weak links between remittances and investment is such even if middle-to-high income migrant families, whose main source of income is remittances from dependents abroad, are rising, says the IMF team.

The team cited data from the triennial Family Income and Expenditures Survey of the National Statistics Office, the same data that Milan Brahmbhatt and Dan Biller based their analyses for a report on East Asia for the World Bank.

Citing 1991 to 2003 data from the triennial FIES, the number of the two lowest-income migrant families receiving remittances declined from 60 percent in 1991 to 18 percent in 2003.Likewise, the top two income brackets among migrant families that count income abroad as their main source of income rose from 40 percent in 1991 to 82 percent 12 years after.

“Given that some 80 percent of (Filipino migrant) families that receive income from abroad as their main source are now middle and high-income families, it is much more likely now than in 1991 that the uses for this income go beyond consumption and subsistence, and are put toward saving and investment,” the IMF team’s paper wrote.

But the situation surrounding remittances and investments suggests that the lack of a relationship between investment and remittances “could indeed be transitory, and that going forward, one may see a pick up in investment in physical capital.”

The weak links between remittances and investment, however, also occurs in many remittance-receiving countries. “Country specific factors could determine whether a rise in external flows leads to greater consumption, including housing-related spending on the one hand, or greater investment in fixed capital on the other,”

In the case of the Philippines, the IMF team members observed that financial intermediation is a primary issue. “(Philippine banks are) still repairing their balance sheets, and are risk averse in the current environment,” IMF observed. But even if there were financial intermediation, the IMF team thinks that remittances as a percentage of gross domestic product should have increased by three percentage points, and this situation “might have a more pronounced effect on Philippine investment, which continues to decline.

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BPI joins fray to capture remittance from Pinoys in Europe

BY WILLIAM ALZONA

MAKATI CITY--BEFORE sliding to third position in the Philippine banking industry, Ayala family-led Bank of the Philippine Islands set its eyes on the profitable remittance market that Philippine National Bank previously dominated.
But with its shareholder hobbled by regulations in the United States, where bulk of remittances from some eight million overseas Filipinos go through, BPI settled for the United Kingdom.
This was what BPI president Aurelio R. Montinola III told stockholders during their annual meeting last March.“Why London, when you can target the United States where there are more overseas Filipino workers?” a shareholder echoed what would be expected questions from the banking industry.
“Certainly, we would like to have a branch in the US, but regulatory agencies would not allow us because of our partner, DBS, is not fully engaged in bank operations,” Montinola replied. Singapore's DBS Group, Southeast Asia's biggest bank, owns 20 percent of BPI. The rest of the shares are owned by Philippine conglomerate Ayala Corp., which also has assets and investments in real estate and water utility.
At the BPI stockholders’ meeting, executives revealed that the move to put up a branch in London, one of the world's financial centers, has been on the pipeline ever since the bank made inroads in the European remittance market.
According to its plans, BPI will shell out £20 million (or about P1.9 billion) to have a full service branch in London to beef up its remittance center currently based in Italy. Montinola said in March BPI expects to establish a UK-registered corporation in about six months, although the Financial Services Authority of London has already given BPI its British license to operate a bank last April 26.
“We are in the stage of finalizing our systems now. We are in one location and we need a second location [for technical purposes]. We expect that we would be in the pre-operation stage by about September or October this year and then, for next year, a full operation," he told reporters after the stockholders’ meeting.
“The whole point is to grow from remittance transactions to overseas banking relationships,” he added.

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Peso’s gain is OFW’s bane

BY LEO J. SANTIAGO JR. and JULIE JAVELLANA-SANTOS

MANILA—IN A remittance slip, there was an additional US$50 that Cesar Dimasupil’s daughter Arlene sent from London. But he remained stoic.

“That [money] would just even things out,” Dimasupil says of the dilemma that most families of overseas Filipino workers are facing under a stronger peso and a record-low inflation rate.

Dimasupil, like most Filipinos brought up in a male-as-strong society, says he doesn’t know if he should celebrate for getting the added money from something he said he shouldn’t have asked from his daughter in the first place.

“But what can I do? They say the strong peso could lead to lower prices. That hasn’t happened in the past months,” Dimasupil said.

The Dimasupil family shares the conundrum of a Philippine economy that a recent World Bank report said has been growing, in part because of the cash sent by nearly eight million Filipinos temporarily or permanently working or living abroad.In a report released by the WB last month, it noted that the stronger peso helped inflation rates to fall to 4.3 percent by end-2006 and to 2.6 percent by February this year.

Food and oil prices remained “relatively” stable, the WB said. Pummeled in recent years by political shocks to the economy and macro-economic anxieties, the peso appreciated by nearly eight percent against the US dollar in 2006, and strengthened further in early this year.It’s a cause celebre for most businesses, especially importers who can pay less from products they’re bringing in from abroad.

But for an economy that the WB said is relying on consumption, the celebration isn’t felt yet by OFW families here whose remittance receipt is boosting consumption.According to economist Fernando Aldaba, herein lies the risks of an economy relying much on remittances since many OFWs could also hedge on a possible uptick of the dollar.

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The Poor Giver: Charity Group Founder’s Woes Hobble OFW Philanthropy

By JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

CALOOCAN CITY—ON A side street of a biscuit factory here the smell of spoiled food, re-used cooking oil, murky wastewater, and sweat of a hundred laborers mixes with the fluttering haze of Maria Luisa Tayco’s dreams of migrant giving.
It is here where Tayco, recipient of the Singaporean community’s Golden Samaritan award, faces up to the reality of life after 14 years of working near Raffles’ Center and seven years of charity work on Bayanihan Centre in Pasir Panjang Road.
It is here where Tayco, who was hailed by a television show on New Year’s Eve as one of the best people the Philippines has, decided to sell her kidney.
“It’s for my son,” the 47-year-old Tayco said.
These four words echo the notion that migrant giving —hailed by advocates as OFW philanthropy— is as easy as securing a fulfilling job in a developing country like the Philippines.
The fate of Tayco, founder of the Singapore-based charity group Pinokyos Welfare Inc., would reveal that the belief that temporary migrant workers can give back to the country (aside from their remittances) looks good in paper.
Her friends and former supporters could only scratch their heads in disbelief.
“Logic alone cannot fathom why she remains helping others other than herself,” said one of her friends. She owes him P5,000.
“It isn’t healthy to help others if you have your own urgent needs, Luisa,” another friend told her. Tayco owes her P2,500.
She owes this reporter P5,000.
Tayco, who once shipped books and school supplies from Singapore to the Philippines worth P2 million, couldn’t pay those loans now amounting to P27,000 (roughly US$500).
Still, she remains focused on continuing her Pinokyos work: the food business she put up fronting the Rebisco Biscuit Corp.’s factory here was named after her group.
Likewise, a plastic piggy bank gobbles coins steadily than the Pinokyos Canteen’s cash box.
“This is for Pinokyos,” Tayco said, her hand softly landing on the coin bank’s back, temporarily forgetting that for failing to pay water and power supplies to the canteen were cut off.

To read full story, visit the OFWJC Website

Gov’t Says Open to Redeploy Pinoys Not Ready to Return

BY KRISTY ANNE C. TOPACIO-MANALAYSAY

MANILA—SUCCESSFULLY building a business after working abroad, Alberto Limbo Perez still couldn’t be pinned down in his own country. Luckily for him, a recently-built government center can give him that chance.
“Who would reject the opportunity of working abroad?” the 47-year-old Perez said in Tagalog. “Earnings from abroad are a big help to meet our needs. It’s a waste to let the opportunity pass.”
This comes from a man whose seven-year-old work abroad is being poured on a house with swimming pool at a cost of P4 million, almost half of what the Philippine government spent on a building to mold Filipinos like him to either stay home for good or go back to migrant work.
The building in Intramuros, Manila, was funded by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration with a P7-million purse (US$140,000 at US$1=P48) according to Labor Attache to Japan Reydeluz Conferido.
Conferido said the National Reintegration Center for Overseas Filipino Workers would allow temporary migrant Filipino workers with plans to return permanently here to adjust first by allowing them go back to overseas work.
According to Conferido, the Center could help these Filipino workers find jobs anywhere in the world while preparing for that time he or she could eventually return.
“The past program was intended for OFWs who have decided to stay here for good,” the country’s labor attaché to Japan said during the launch of the center early March.
It’s this past program, begun at the start of the new millennium and formally launched three years ago, that the new project builds on, Conferido added.
“The personal reintegration has been further enriched to zero in on the abilities of the OFWs and help them match the environment in the Philippines a lot better, taking advantage of their particular expertise and skills and match them to existing opportunities in the Philippines,” Conferido said.“If the OFW is not ready yet to return to the Philippine for good, the same personal reintegration program is going to help them still look for appropriate opportunities abroad,” he added.

For full story, visit the OFWJC Website

Chamber of Commerce for OFWs Pushed

BY KRISTY ANNE C. TOPACIO-MANALAYSAY and JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

MANILA–PEOPLE who built their business from working abroad are moving to form a Chamber of Commerce to lure more overseas Filipino workers into becoming entrepreneurs.
“Instead of going to greedy local businessmen, fellow OFWs can go to themselves and make arrangements to supply some raw materials, or even provide discounts to some of their products to fellow OFW entrepreneurs,” businessman Miguel Bolos told the OFW Journalism Consortium®.
Bolos spoke about the moves to form an organization after a meeting of former overseas Filipino workers-turned-entrepreneurs early March.
That meeting was attended by Filipinos who successfully built a business using what they earned and learned from working abroad.
There’s the garments export business couple Alberto and Liza Perez.
Alberto used to work as a steel fabricator in Saudi Arabia, Aruba and Malta before going into business with hundred thousand pesos (US$2,083.30 at current exchange rates) and 17 sewing machines as capital.
Before it was Perezes who went overseas; now it’s their Apryl and Aira’s Apparel brand, which they claim are bought by Wal-Mart in New York, United States.
There’s also former Saudi Arabia contract worker Eduardo Callera who owns Canor Express International Brokerage Inc., a customs brokerage firm.Before, the boxes of products Callera sent home to his family in the Philippines were the ones transported in trucks. Now, Callera’s business —his trucks— moves these boxes to both domestic and international senders.
Bolos believes that an OFW chamber of commerce will enable fellow migrant entrepreneurs to talk among themselves and be suppliers of needed raw materials for their products.
It just might work because, as he said: “We need it.”
No OFW chamber of commerce based in the Philippines exists, although Bolos said he, fellow returning OFW Francisco Aguilar and fellow migrant workers in Saudi Arabia have tried —and currently moves to— forming such an organization.
Filipino immigrants in the United States have formed county-level and a US-wide chamber of commerce. The biggest of these chambers is the Federation of Philippine-American Chambers of Commerce (FPACC), a network of some 46 chapter chambers of commerce that have over-5,000 member-enterprises run by Filipino-Americans.

To read full story, visit the OFWJC Website

Asean Migration Pact Seen to Push Low-skilled Workers into Further Risk

BY JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

MAKATI CITY—LESS protected under an international convention, domestic helpers and low-skilled temporary migrant workers still couldn’t find solace within a pact among Asean countries, analysts pointed out recently.
Advocates say this omission by member-countries in a non-binding declaration on migrant workers’ protection by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations could push millions of transient workers into accepting more dirty and demeaning jobs and weak bargaining positions.
What has prevailed in bilateral or multilateral arrangements on migrant workers is the movement of business and skilled people not on semi-skilled and unskilled workers, says Chia Siow Yue of the Singapore-headquartered East Asian Development Network (EADN).
Chia was recently in the country to speak on the “Asean Declaration on the Protection and Promotion on the Rights of Migrant Workers” that was forged in the country two months ago.
Her insights come as a second-thought on a pact that received high praises even from militant migrant advocates’ groups like the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA).
“It (Asean declaration) is good news for migrant workers,” MFA’s William Gois said in a separate forum.
Gois said the Philippines capitalized on its hosting of the Asean summit to move this non-binding declaration forward.
This is a big first step for “Asean governments to recognize the contributions of migrant workers,” he added.
Gois echoes analysts’ views that temporary migrant workers remain the source of many of the Asean member-countries’ economic strength in the past five years.
The Philippines, for one, has weathered one financial crisis after another because of billions of overseas Filipinos’s dollar remittances.
International Monetary Fund data on the balance of payments has cited the Philippines as Asean’s leading recipient of remittances from 380,080 temporary contract workers.
Data from 1998 to 2005 by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration bared that the Philippines has deployed some 196,900 temporary contract workers to Singapore, 54,914 to Malaysia, 96,748 to Brunei, 14,051 to Indonesia, 12,921 to Thailand, and 5,446 to Vietnam.
Still, Gois personally thinks the declaration “is only for a select group of workers, and eases out low-skilled migrant workers”.
“Unskilled labor is being hired as cheap labor in Asean’s competitive industries. Negotiators in trade talks seem blind to the plight of unskilled workers,” he added.

For full story, visit OFWJC Website

Steady Supply Stops Skill Spill, Social Savant Says

BY JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

MANILA—THEY are the armies of salvation; the nearly million entrants to the country’s labor force, which an economist said ensures the steady supply of skills for the economy.
“We simply have too much labor,” Doctor of Philosophy holder Alvin Ang told the OFW Journalism Consortium (OFWJC) ®.
Ang last month presented his research in public that affirms the continuing export of labor doesn’t necessarily contribute to the phenomenon called “brain drain.”Advocates against the government’s structured processing of workers for foreign economies have warned the Philippines may find it difficult to reach economic progress because its highly-skilled people –doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers– are moving out.The University of Santo Tomas professor, however, even doubts the country will experience an economic slowdown due to this outflow.
Ang believes the Philippines “has adjusted to the workers’ overseas migration by replenishing them.”
“The government seems lucky,” Ang explains, “because abundant labor supply has given it time to ease fears of a permanent brain drain.”
He said that even if Filipino doctors and nurses leave, “there are many more left behind here.”“Not all Filipinos want to migrate anyway,” Ang said.He uses himself as an example: “If the Philippines’s brain drain problem were permanent, I myself would have not been here right now.”
Ang is going against past survey, especially by the Social Weather Stations, that points to the increasing number of Filipinos wanting to go abroad for work.Health industry leaders have warned in the past of the exodus of doctors and nurses, especially from government hospitals, seeking the high pay accorded to their colleagues in another country.
The local airline industry also warned of such exodus, especially of mechanics and engineers poached by headhunters of foreign airlines.
Another economist, Edita Tan of the University of the Philippines, said in a 2006 paper that even the rising numbers of Filipinos migrating for overseas work and permanent settlement “has not tightened the country’s [domestic] labor market.”
“(The Philippine) labor force increases faster than domestic and foreign labor employment,” Tan wrote in her article titled “Labor Migration and the Philippine Labor Market” for the International Migration Review.

To read full story, visit the OFWJC Website

Firms Tap Singing-Frenzy OFWs for Biz Expansion

BYWILLIAM ALZONA and ISAGANI DE LA PAZ

MANILA—BOXER Manny Pacquiao’s endorsement of a portable music-video microphone shows the Filipinos’ penchant for singing and reflects the market is deep and wide.
But Butch Albarracin remains unimpressed. He says revenues from the domestic market are proving to be unreliable for his entertainment-focused business.
Albarracin, founder of the Center for Pop Music Philippines Inc., is setting his sights on eight million overseas Filipino workers who, despite temporarily or permanently living or working abroad, shares one dream: becoming the next big pop superstar.
Began in 1984, Center for Pop emerged as the country’s top music training school, aiming to develop a curriculum to incubate the next superstars in the entertainment industry. It has outlived other music training schools set up by other top musicians and composers in the country, after the Center, Alabarracin said, took the marketing part of the business seriously.
We balanced our focus on the music and selling the Center’s services, he added.
That strategy paid well for Albarracin, who was recognized last month by a local marketing group for his success in medium-scale entrepreneurship.
Today, the music school has 21 branches and extension classes in about 20 schools in Metro Manila.
But instead of moving towards the provinces, Albarracin said he’s more inclined to expand outside the country.
While he said he has received an offer from an investor in Daly City, California, Albarracin said he’s setting the stage for entry in Hong Kong.
“If we can go there and teach them how to sing, they can contribute to the growth of the [Filipino] community [there]. They can have a skill, and they won’t be shameful [of their jobs],” he added.

Sing-call
IT is also in Hong Kong that publicly-listed Filipino firm Intellectual Property Ventures Group (Ipvg) Corp. found not only the next singing sensation but a unique market for its prepaid calling card.Launched in July in Hong Kong, Ipvg partnered with HK-based IDT Corp. subsidiary IDT Telecom Inc. to search for a “Philippine Idol” version among an estimated 200,000 Filipinos in the former British colony.
The contest requires contestants to record their Filipino or English song entries—acapella, or with music accompaniment in the background—while using a pre-paid calling card sold by IDT Asia.Just recently, Ipvg announced from Manila the winner as Elvira Manacmul, 31, of Dinalupihan, Bataan, who bested four other finalists: 17-year-old Elija Clave of Malasqui, Pangasinan; Irene Aquino, 33, of Cagayan Valley; and, Julie Ann Jereza, 25, of San Narciso, Zambales. All were living in HK when they joined the contest.
“They outperformed over 800 other participants who phoned in… to record their songs for the contest,” IDT said.
The recorded songs were played weekly in the Philippines Tonight Show on Metro Plus AM 1044 radio which also encouraged listeners to vote for their pick.
The firm said over-400,000 votes were cast by listeners in the five month period that ended in the Grand Finals January 28, 2007.
The Ipvg statement said some 12,000 OFWs braved the chilly weather to view the creative side of the Filipino.Manacmul was selected during the live radio broadcast performance at Chatter Road in Central Hong Kong where a panel of judges pushed up her share of the estimated hundred thousand votes that poured for the contestants.Manacmul, a mother of two girls aged five- and seven-years old, would receive a recording contract with VIVA, a round-trip HK-Manila ticket, mobile phone, passes for two to Disneyland-HK, pre-paid call cards worth HK$500, and a “Magic Sing,” the portable music-video player-microphone endorsed by Pacquiao.
While Ipvg’s partnership with IDT Asia appears to be working, it is not envied by Albarracin.
“I am through with partnership. You end up fighting each other and one will go away with the money. That guy who will run away are usually those who are only after [the] money. Me, I cannot run because I’m a musician,” he said.

License to sing
ALBARRACIN, a voice coach, said to expand abroad, he must hurdle first the issue of whose license they will use: the singers’ or theirs.
Either way, he said, it could be a cause of headache.Using the singers’ license abroad could be risky since it meant partnering with other parties, while having our own license to operate in other countries meant tons of documentary requirements, Albarracin explained.
Still, he’s open to other arrangements.“There are so many arrangement that we can do. One is either I go there as a businessman, or I go there as a speaker,” Albarracin said, citing it’s easier to go the latter path.
“But I’m eyeing …a lasting relationship,” he added.
Albarracin’s plans and Ipvg’s tack come at a time when the Philippine music industry’s top revenue earners are few while others are still either catching the next flight to stardom or to other countries as solo or band entertainers.
But whether or not the plans of Albarracin and Ipvg –the firm is eyeing other countries– push through, they admit the OFW remains a good market.
“These are new markets. Sometimes people here (in the Philippines) have money, sometimes they have [none]. So we should have reserve sources of income,” Albarracin said pointing to OFWs.
Ipvg spokesperson Eric Paragas was quoted in a newspaper report as saying the success of the singing tilt has led the firm to consider “holding the contest again in Hong Kong and/or other countries.”
Indeed, both Albarracin and firms like Ipvg are singing the same tune: the country’s talents—and revenue sources—can be found outside its borders.

To read other articles, visit the OFWJC Website

Women OFWs Prop Up Spouses, Business

By MARLENE H. ELMENZO

TAGUIG CITY—WHEN two men here felt a great financial need, they turned to their wives, proving the resourcefulness of Filipino women even when they are indirectly involved in business.
Take Leticia Marrero, for one, who worked as a domestic helper in Hong Kong to prevent her husband from selling a lot that he inherited from his parents.
The couple now owns and operates a resort in the Mountain Province, far north of here where they were awarded by a government-backed group for their inspiring business story.
There’s also Didi Dayag who went to Kuwait in 1986 and whose salary she received for working as a nurse there helped build more capital for her husband Eugenio’s cattle business also in the northern Philippine province of Cagayan.
What the two women had in common was having a focus on the reasons for working abroad and their subsequent decision to come back after having achieved their goals.
Dayag, for one, was able to buy eight hectares of rice land aside from supporting her husband’s ranch expansion.
The Dayags now own a fully mechanized plantation with three tractors, a stockroom, and a solar dryer. These allow the couple to manage fourteen hectares of rice farm, forty-three hectares of sugar cane and seventeen hectares of cassava.
They have also ventured into seed growing.
The couple’s business created jobs for around 68 families relying on seasonal farm work for income.
Marrero, on the other hand, was able to augment her husband’s work as postman, ensuring their children graduated college.
The grasping of a bachelor’s degree by her youngest, the last of four children, marked the end of Marrero’s stay in a foreign land.
With her savings worth less than a hundred thousand pesos, her family decided to develop their land into a garden resort with three swimming pools, picnic cottages, a lawn tennis court, a playground, and a convenience store.
It was the first of its kind in the province.
“Masaya ako dahil mayroon konting pinagkakakitaan,” Marrero said. “Pag wala na kami, merong maiiwan para sa mga anak ko na naumpisahan na namin mag-asawa.” (I’m happy we have a steady source of income, however small. At least, we could also leave something to our children when we pass away.)

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Realtor’s Success Proves RP Gov’t Support Key to OFW Business Dev’t

BY MARLENE H. ELMENZO

TAGUIG CITY–BUILDING and selling high-end houses in a war-torn land like Jolo might appear surreal for some investors, especially overseas Filipino workers.
For former OFW Michael Abubakar who claims a successful realty business in his hometown, links with government is key.
Abubakar was recently awarded by a government-backed group for investing in this third class municipality and capital of Sulu.
Populated by traditionally peaceful tribes of Islamic believers, Jolo, Sulu, is also clutched in a shooting war between Philippine government armed forces and armed members of branded-terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.
Abubakar and his residential subdivision-building business were recognized last December by the group of Jose Concepcion, government consultant for entrepreneurship, as one of the OFW entrepreneurs dubbed as “most inspiring.”
“Jolo was an impoverished land and you build a housing like this and parang siyang babae na na make-up-an mo. Bago pa makuha ng iba, ikaw pa ang unang na-fall in love,” Abubakar said. (“Jolo is like a woman you’ve applied make up on and before others take her, you would be the first to fall in love.”)
Abubakar used the past tense to refer to his hometown which he left in 1973 after fighting raged between government forces and Muslims rejecting the leadership of Manila-based elected officials.
Twenty-three years later, he returned home in one piece and rich, having sold a quarter-of-a-million peso house in plush Ayala-Alabang subdivision in Manila for thirty-seven times its value.
Likewise, Abubakar said he was receiving US$6,600 a month as salary from an American firm when he decided to go home in 1996.
With that money, he established the M. Abubakar Consolidated Engineering (Mace) in Manila and flew back to Jolo the year an Asian financial crisis popped the real estate sector of countries including the Philippines.
Like a clueless gardener sent to make a landscape out of a vast, arid lot, I was confronted with a serious predicament–where and how to start, Abubakar said.
The government began it for him through a joint-venture housing project for Muslims.
With one foot in the public sector and another in business, Abubakar tapped a five-year loan from the government housing agency and built the First Sulu Estate Subdivision in Patikul, one of Sulu’s 18 municipalities.
It was the first high-class subdivision established in the province, Abubakar claims.
“When you come to think about it, in Jolo you cannot find good clients,” he said. “No one told me that [the project) would be successful. Other people told me, ‘Oy, you’re just throwing good money after bad.’”
Even my wife thought I was going crazy, Abubakar said.

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Filipino foreign funds flow foils farm progress —economist

BY JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

MANILA—No one, it seems, wants to be a farmer anymore.
Japan-trained economist Dr. Alvin Ang said the Philippines is getting too much money from Filipinos abroad that “it seems (Filipino) labor would rather wait for the opportunity to be an OFW (overseas Filipino worker) than work in the farms.”
Rising inflows of remittances is “causing sharp declines in agricultural production,” Ang said in his paper “Workers’ Remittances and Economic Growth.”
Presented to mostly students of the University of Sto. Tomas where he teaches economics, Ang’s paper challenges the positive regard given to remittances of overseas Filipinos, which has hit more than US$11 billion (which translates to half-a-trillion pesos) last year.
In a country that has recently emerged from a fiscal crisis, as announced by President Gloria Arroyo, that money is important.
Ang’s observation, however, articulates the hidden worries that the Philippines may be relying too much on remittances from its more than eight million citizens in 190 countries.
This is especially worrisome as government failed to hit its domestic economic performance target last year, meeting only a 5.4-percent growth rate in the country’s gross domestic product. Government’s economic managers think that growth rate was below the Arroyo administration’s GDP target of a low 5.5 percent to a high 6.1 percent.
Former budget department chief Romulo Neri blamed typhoons especially during the last three months of 2006, which “brought down agricultural output.”
The Socio-economic Planning Secretary specifically pinned the blame on typhoon “Reming” which battered the Bicol region, one of the major sources of the country’s cash crops.
Last year’s farm performance affirms agriculture as the lowest performing sector of the economy with a 4.1 percent growth. Services is the economy’s top performer (5.4 percent), while industry is second-best (4.8 percent).
Ang said this situation prevails because of the continuing attraction of going abroad for work among households that receive remittances.
He added that some members of these households who own farmlands “leave the agricultural sector (as) their per capita incomes grew.”

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Failures in Govt Lending Project for OFW Groups Cited

BY CANDICE Y. CEREZO

QUEZON CITY—THE bankruptcy of roughly 200 government-funded livelihood groups of overseas Filipino workers and their families reveals major errors in a project that an OFW leader and a government report said was used solely for the 2004 elections.
“Their promise to us is that there will be an OFW Groceria loan, followed by OFW Botica, and thirdly, that each member will have a loan of P200,000. However, these did not reach us [except for the grocery] loan, which we even had difficulties [operating],” Lutgarda Zapanta, a leader of an OFW group, said.
Zapanta was referring to the micro-lending project for OFWs –called OFW Groceria– that is hobbled by the inability of beneficiaries like her to pay back the grocery products for re-sale loaned to them by government.
She received in October a notice from OWWA asking her, as president of her group OFW BZ Chapter, to pay a 22-month past due loan of P45,834.80.
The problem: she and other leaders of groups she organized and which tapped the lending program don’t have the resources to cough out the money –a total quarter of a million pesos (US$7,000)– they owe government.
“Chairman, pano na ito? Two years na, wala na ang grocery. Wala na’ng pera. Anong gagawin natin?” Zapanta cited her and the leaders’ worries. [How would we go about this, Madam chairman? Two years have passed and the grocery’s folded up, the money’s gone. What should we do?]
A recent report by Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration, which now handles the two-year project, pointed to the 2004 election atmosphere as the source of debacle for Zapanta and the leaders.
A number of OFW families and dependents deliberately organized themselves just to avail of the project because it is election-time especially at the National Capital Region, the report dated June 30, 2006, noted.
It added that borrowers had a “shallow appreciation on [sic] the real objectives of the project, as they view [sic] the project primarily as an economic activity.”
“There was no clear orientation or direction of the project,” the report said .Zapanta’s predicament comes at a time when another poll event is just around the corner while government is rehashing a shuttered micro-lending scheme.

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Stranded Pinoys in Lebanon Still Traded, NGO Says

BY ISAGANI DE LA PAZ

QUEZON CITY—FILIPINO workers, mostly women, in Lebanon are still being traded for new employees after getting sidetracked from work when fighting broke out in September, advocates said.
Echoing the report of Catholic congregation Daughters of Charity Sister Amelia Asiedu-Torres, nonprofit Kanlungan Centre Foundation Inc. said migrant workers unable to flee during the shooting war between Israeli and Hizbollah fighters are being sold to other employers.
“The agencies …still make business on them by selling them to another employer at a higher price,” Kanlungan staff Ma. Helen T. Dabu said in a forum here, quoting Sr. Asiedu-Torres of the Beirut, Lebanon-based nonprofit Afro-Asian Migrant Center.
Dabu revealed the results of Kanlungan’s policy research on Filipino women migrants in Lebanon after workers were caught in the middle of fierce fighting there last October, leading to frenzied evacuation of a tenth of an estimated 30,000 Filipinos in that territory.
The research results packaged in an 11-paged Powerpoint presentation was timed as the first topic in a lecture series honoring Kanlungan founder Ma. Virginia Alunan-Melgar. Alunan-Melgar founded the nonprofit group in 1989 when trends bare an increasing number of women going out of the country and the abuses employers heaped on them than male Filipinos’ mostly labor-related cases.
Dabu said they talked by overseas call to Sr. Asiedu-Torres November 28 on the eve of the presentation of the research in Quezon City.
She added the Roman Catholic nun said that the center receive telephone calls from a minimum of seven migrant women a day, expressing a gamut of problems at the hands of their Lebanese employers.
“They have finished their contracts but the employers would not let them go home,” Dabu said of what Sr. Asiedu-Torres told her.
She added that the salaries of Filipino women migrants there –at US$100 (P5,000 in US$1=P50 exchange rates) monthly– are withheld from a period of three months.
“Some employers bluntly tell them that they cannot go home because no one will replace them,” Dabu said.
“Most of these girls [sic] are very timid to discuss matteres with their employers so at one shout of the employers they just withdraw and cry,” Dabu quoted Sr. Asiedu-Torres as saying.

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OWWA Exec Says Religious Ties Can’t Protect Women

BY PATRICIA MARCELO & ISAGANI DE LA PAZ

MANILA—A LINE in the International Declaration of Human Rights wasn’t able to protect her from a rapist, nor could the teachings of the Qu’ran: Adela is as Muslim as the Arab employer who she said repeatedly raped her until she got pregnant.“Religious affiliation, whether Muslim or Christian, does not guarantee your exemption,” Amy B. Crisostomo of the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration said of Adela’s fate at the hands of her Muslim Arab employer in Kuwait.
Such is the sad twist of reality at the 58th year of the commemoration of a document guaranteeing equal protection of rights of peoples, whether they are of the same or different faith or of gender.
Likewise, the case of Adela (not her real name) slings mud on the international commemoration of Migrant Workers’ Day December 18: there are still many others –at least more than half of a million Filipinos leaving the country every year are women– needing state protection.
“No one is exempted from being raped or being maltreated [while working abroad],” added Crisostomo, officer-in-charge of OWWA in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (OWWA-ARMM).
It is from ARMM where Adela came from and gave birth to a weak premature baby who Crisostomo said the employer who raped her tried to get aborted.
Her baby symbolically led her to freedom since the Arab employer was forced to repatriate Adela before his family discovers using the Filipino Muslim from Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao as his own personal sex slave.
Adela bared the details of her horrifying experience to Crisostomo who, being a woman herself and a government employee, documented and gave the story to reporters to emphasize the danger Filipino women migrant workers face.
Data from OWWA-ARMM showed that last year, it received a total 181 welfare cases, nearly all of it (178) involving women, all working as domestic helpers.
The cases that the regional office handled involved maltreatment, unpaid salary, run-away, sexual molestation and abuse, rape, contract violation, death, overload of work, sickness, and no communication with the relative abroad among others.
Of five cases of sexual molestation/abuse/rape reported in OWWA-ARMM office, Adela’s case was so far the most serious since she bore a baby, Crisostomo said.
The baby, she added, is a testament to the cruelty of men, whether Catholic or Muslim.
The official expressed belief that violations and abused against Muslim overseas Filipino workers could be higher since there could be those who did not bother to file any complaint before the OWWA.

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Firms tap signing-frenzy OFWs for biz expansion

BY WILLIAM ALZONA & ISAGANI DE LA PAZ

MANILA—BOXER Manny Pacquiao’s endorsement of a portable music-video microphone proves the Filipinos’ penchant for singing and reflects the market is deep and wide.
But Butch Albarracin remains unimpressed. He said revenues from the domestic market is proving to be unreliable for his entertainment-focused business.
Albarracin, founder of the Center for Pop Music Philippines Inc., is setting his sights on 8 million overseas Filipino workers who, despite temporarily or permanently living or working abroad, shares one dream: becoming the next big pop superstar.
Began in 1984, Center for Pop emerged as the country’s top music training school, aiming to develop a curriculum to incubate the next superstars in the entertainment industry.
It has outlived other music training schools set up by other top musicians and composers in the country, after the Center, Alabarracin said, took the marketing part of the business seriously.
We balanced our focus on the music and selling the Center’s services, he added.
That strategy paid well for Albarracin, who was recognized last month by a local marketing group for his success in medium-scale entrepreneurship.
Today, the music school has 21 branches and extension classes in about 20 schools in Metro Manila.
But instead of moving towards the provinces, Albarracin said he’s more inclined to expand outside the country. He said he has received an offer from an investor in Daly City, California, but Albarracin said he’s setting the stage for entry in Hong Kong.
”If we can go there and teach them how to sing, they can contribute to the growth of the [Filipino] community [there]. They can have a skill, and they won’t be shameful [of their jobs],” he added.

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Paroled Pinoy’s Past, Present Polish Parol Parade

BY JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA—PAROLED convict Rico Reimigio’s hands grip different sets of bars symbolizing a freedom only he could taste: bamboo strips for his first parol, the Filipino Christmas lantern.
On his face is a genuine smile, also the first time this reporter sees on Reimigio, the former thug feared while stomping the streets of San Francisco.
He is back again on the streets, as the lantern he finished in 90 minutes would be displayed proudly along this city’s South of Market (SoMa) area as the Filipino-American neighborhood here holds its fourth parade of Filipino lanterns on December 9.“I can’t describe the happiness I feel,” the 45-year-old Reimigio said, his inch-thick thumb and forefinger deftly slipping the paper-thin bamboo slits to tie a knot holding the five-pointed lantern.
He holds it up against the light, silently proud of what his work reflects and giddy with excitement at his first Christmas outside prison.
Reimigio is grateful for the opportunity given to him by the sponsor of the parade and the materials for the lanterns, a nonprofit Filipino-American neighborhood group in San Francisco’s SoMa area.
Now out on a five-year parole program, Reimigio is also grateful to having rediscovered his being a Filipino in the United States, which has tided him over for 25 years at the San Quentin Detention Center in San Rafael, California.
Jail riots, he narrated, are common occurrences in the 150-year-old San Quentin where the US government initially imprisoned most hardened and violent criminals.
After acknowledging his Filipino roots, which his mother reminded him of after his first three years in San Quentin, Reimigio said he took a different tack than slugging it out with fellow detainees during riots.
“Talking things over worked and inmates from other races respect Filipino inmates for that.”
That respect is what Reimigio has been bringing since stepping out of prison in January this year.
ToughHE smelled the marijuana before he saw the pot smoker, a Filipino nurse.
Reimigio wasn’t surprised to have felt déjà vu walking the streets of SoMa. It was here when drugs and violence was part of his everyday life since arriving from the Philippines in 1973.
He was only 12 then, he says, but SoMa became his little “Tondo”, a gangster’s haven in the Philippines during the 1960s.Gangsterism among high school students like him became his folly in 1980 when a fellow gang member killed two African-American males. Reimigio was 19 then and, together with three other gang members, were sentenced to life imprisonment.The courts said we were guilty “by association,” Reimigio said.
Going to San Quentin, he said, never liberated him from the environment of illegal drug abuse: prison itself was flooded with drugs and alcohol. How these substances flowed in and out of the penal system there, Reimigio couldn’t tell.
But his mother saved him from entering the bowels of hell.
“When she visited me in prison, I just felt this sadness within that was so deep I couldn’t shake it off. I then asked myself, ‘Why am I doing this to her?,” Reimigio said.
“It was then that I’ve realized it is never late to do something.”
The smell of pot grew stronger and whacked Reimigio from the reverie.
“Stop taking drugs, man,” he tells the nurse.
He said he would walk this particular street and say the same thing over and over again until the nurse comes to his senses.“He won’t change overnight,” Reimigio said.
This is what he do –gang and drug prevention work in SoMa– as a tribute to his mother, who had long hoped for the son’s exit from prison bars.
SoMaSOMA is an area adjacent to Market Street in downtown San Francisco where most foreigners and first-time immigrants have been settling, Filipinos including, since the 1920s.
Its Mission Street is a prism of lives in paltry and plenty. The street with its chic buildings and parks links SoMa to the city’s financial district. People would come out of high-rise and medium-rise housing projects to buy something from dollops of grocery stores or shops selling sex toys and videos that splotch the street. Along the way, they would cast eyes on the homeless or consciously or unconsciously bump into drug addicts.
This is the street Reimigio returned to pounding with his soft-soled shoes and brain cells honed inside San Quentin.“Now I am guarding SoMa from violence.”
This self-appointed task was a trek that began in the late 1980s when Reimigio went back to books while inside prison.So starting the late 1980s, Reimigio was in a mode of personal reform.
He finished some general education equivalency subjects leading to a high school diploma, and earned an Associate in Arts degree at Hartnell College; the prison bars just a physical barrier.
The toughest challenge was within himself, especially during jail riots: Reimigio wielding his tongue rather than his fist.Holding dialogues among inmates helped him develop leadership qualities. Prison officials noticed the changes when they appointed Reimigio to lead incoming Filipino inmates serving life sentences –lifers, as they were called.
I’d tell them first “to be always conscious about their surrounding environment,” Reimigio said.
He would also incessantly remind inmates to master their addiction to illegal substances that filter through the prison bars.“If you want to get high, take drugs in your room. But I suggest you stop taking drugs,” he continuously told Filipino inmates.Lifers would lose hope and regress towards accepting the fate of never again getting outside prison.
A lifer himself, Reimigio’s hopes always pointed to the opportunity that things could change “if we do good always.”“I always tell the Pinoy inmates doing good will boost chances to shorten time in prison when parole opportunities come our way,” Reimigio said.
He proved that when that chance came in 2005: he applied for parole.

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