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Depending on whom you talk to, sighs of relief, or
regret, marked the recruitment industry when Labor
Secretary Arturo Brion was sworn in last week as
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Then again, the
industry might be celebrating or mourning too soon. The
acting labor secretary is the current head of the
Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, Marianito Roque
Jr.
Brion’s
stint as head of the Department of Labor and Employment
was marked by closures of more recruitment agencies than
usual, particularly those deploying domestic helpers to
the Middle East. You see, Brion pegged the minimum
monthly salary of domestic helpers at $400, almost twice
the amount being paid in the Middle East, but slightly
lower than what they get in Hong Kong.
As a
manager, Brion believed in centralization. For example,
all applications for new licenses or renewal of licenses
of recruitment agencies needed his signature. Prior to
leaving DOLE (read: he didn’t know then he was moving
up), Brion returned 50 applications for license renewals
to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).
His new instruction to POEA Administrator Rosalinda
Dimapilis Baldoz was to send up only such applications
for renewals, which did not have pending cases.
The
standard rule followed by Brion’s predecessors was to
approve license renewals of recruitment agencies with
four or less pending cases as along as such applications
were recommended by the POEA. The idea then was that
pending cases (which range from an employer’s discovery
that the worker didn’t have a high-school diploma, or
was underaged, to the failure of the employer to pay the
worker the salary on contract and employment in the
company on contract) before the POEA’s adjudication
division took its time.
As such,
or until Roque or the permanent DOLE rescinds Brion’s
order, this means a further decrease in the number of
recruitment agencies which may deploy workers.
****
Did you
know 1:
The cheapest pay rest room in Metro Manila is the one
outside Manila Ocean Park. It charges P2.50 per person,
which was waived Maundy Thursday and Good Friday,
compared with the standard P10 in malls.
Did you
know 2:
Vietnam
is unable to fully meet our rice order for the lean
months of July to September this year because it has
sold 100,000 hectares of land formerly planted with rice
to China.
Yup,
China is moving 10,000 factories to Vietnam because, get
this, of its cheaper labor. In our case, former rice
lands were converted to subdivisions rather than placed
under agrarian reform.
****
For
quite some time now, Development Bank of the Philippines
(DBP) president Reynaldo David has been trying to sell
the bank’s 37-percent share in LGU Guaranty Corp. to its
fellow shareholders, but hasn’t received an offer worth
talking about. LGUGC is 25-percent owned by Asian
Development Bank and 38 percent by about 10 member-banks
of the Bankers Association of the Philippines.
Then
again, DBP used to own 49 percent of LGUGC when it
started. The idea then was to provide guarantees for
project loans (read: public markets, hospitals and such)
by local government units (LGUs).
This is,
of course, in line with the mandate of the country’s
biggest development bank, which is to serve as a
catalyst for development in the countryside (read: teach
a person how to fish rather than just giving him fish).
Once other investors come in, the development bank is
supposed to make its exit so it can use its money
elsewhere.
In the
case of DBP, it has since been lending directly to LGUs,
which raises the issue of conflict of interest for
David, who also sits on the LGUGC board but, more often
than not, inhibits himself from discussing LGUGC
projects. |
