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LAHORE,
Pakistan—Pakistan
welcomes the presence of skilled and professional
Filipino workers in this South Asian country because it
is “weak” in producing a middle-level work force with
“sophistication,” a Pakistani official said.
“People
from the
Philippines
can come....Pakistani people are generally hard-working.
The issue is in the level of sophistication. Today, the
economy requires very sophisticated men. People who can
use technology. People who can do quality
[work]...Filipinos working here will give Pakistanis the
incentive to work harder. And it is a welcome sign,”
Punjab governor retired Lt. Gen. Khalid Maqbool told six
visiting journalists invited by the Islamabad Policy
Research Institute.
Governor
Maqbool leads
Pakistan’s
most populous and prosperous province. Punjab, with
Lahore as capital, has 55 percent of the 169.3 million
population of Pakistan. It is one of this South Asian
country’s four provinces—the three others being
Balochistan, Sind and the Northwestern Frontier
Province.
There
are 3,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Pakistan,
mostly professionals like engineers, consultants in
international organizations such as the United Nations,
nurses, hotel managers or hotel-restaurant chefs.
It is
common knowledge that Filipinos and Pakistanis compete
in the overseas labor market, making it ironic for
Pakistan itself to be employing middle-level foreign
workers.
One
million Pakistanis work in the Gulf area, 800,000 in the
United Kingdom and 500,000 in the US, Governor Maqbool
disclosed. They send around $5 billion in remittances
annually.
In
contrast, around 10 million OFWs work worldwide and they
remitted $14.4 billion in 2007.
The
governor recognized that
Pakistan
has two extreme levels of work force: on one end, highly
qualified doctors, engineers or software analysts who go
to the
UK,
US, Saudi Arabia or Dubai; and on the other end, it has
unskilled labor.
“Our
center is weak, which is the middle-management staff,
technicians, nurses and teachers,” he said; and this is
the gap that Pakistan wants Filipinos to fill.
However,
Governor Maqbool was quick to stress: “We have some good
programs to make the country overcome this issue.”
He
added: “Pakistani people are conscious of quality. They
know that if they don’t sell quality, they will lose
out,” apparently referring to the competition in the
labor market.
It
should be noted that
Pakistan
has a 53-percent literacy rate (infopak.gov.pk) while
the Philippines has a functional literacy rate of 84.1
percent (census.gov.ph).
Asked if
Pakistanis view the Filipino workers in his country as
competition, Maqbool said: “We don’t discriminate. The
[Pakistani] people think it is the right of the
entrepreneur to get the most [qualified worker]. We
ourselves have to train our people. Actually, we should
not get people from outside. We have 160 million
people.…[but] in this society that is not an issue.
People think that if somebody wants to employ a person
from the Philippines, that’s his choice.”
Informed
that Filipino workers are happy in their workplaces and
have no complaints, Maqbool said, “I will be more
concerned if they [OFWs] are not socially treated well
because we are an open-minded and a very big-hearted
society.”
The
Filipino journalists were surprised to learn that there
are 3,000 OFWs in Pakistan. They had an idea of how the
OFWs in this country are faring when they met computer
engineers Aristotle Baricuatro and Gerry Alas at a hotel
in Karachi, where the two were temporarily staying.
Baricuatro and Alas have been working for some months in
Ericsson Electronics in its plants in
Karachi and
Hyderabad.
Besides
the professionals, there are around 200 Filipino house
help in this country, but they work as mayordoma or head
of the staff in the residences of the rich or top
government officials, like new Prime Minister Syed
Yousaf Raza Gillani.
Philippine Ambassador to Pakistan Jaime Yambao told the
visiting journalists earlier that Filipino house help
are in demand here because they are “educated” and “take
instructions better.”
He said
there are no undocumented OFWs in this country. Besides,
there are many Filipino women married to Pakistanis.
For
Bonifacio Chew, a Chinese Filipino who has been working
for 20 years as chef at Avari Hotel, a five-star hotel,
he and the 300 OFWs in Lahore could not ask for more.
The chef
of Avari’s Dynasty Restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, is
the president of the Filipino Community in
Lahore.
Chew
told the visiting Filipino journalists at the dinner he
hosted for them at the Dynasty that his salary is more
than enough for his family (his two sons were born in
Pakistan),
and his housing and other needs are all provided for by
the hotel.
Besides
Chew and his Filipino assistant chef at Dynasty, two
more Filipinos work at Avari. Peter Aquende, the head
chef, is with Ronald Clasiete at the hotel’s Japanese
restaurant, Fujiyama. Both restaurants have Pakistani
staff.
With
Avari opening soon a branch in
Islamabad,
Chew announced the “attractive” package that awaits
chefs and assistant chefs the hotel needs: salaries that
range from $1,000 to $1,800, plus accommodation, air
fare and other benefits. |
