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By Michael Alan Hamlin.
In the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan starring Jennifer Lopez, a
lowly maid in a five-star New York hotel lives a Cinderella-like
fairy tale. Dressing up in clothes left behind in a room she is
cleaning - as a lark - presents the opportunity to meet - and be
appreciated by - a wealthy hotel guest played by Ralph Fiennes. The
wealthy guest is swept off his feet, and a romance ensues.
In the no-so-romantic comedy, Maid in the Philippines, 170,000
domestic helpers from the Philippines who work in Hong Kong - and
represent a whopping 71 percent of all domestic helpers in the
former colony - get robbed by both Hong Kong chief executive Tung
Chee-hwa
and Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Tung, desperate to
rein in a growing budget deficit, slashed minimum monthly wages for
domestic helpers last week and turned their lost earnings into a tax
his government will collect from the maids' employers.
Ms. Arroyo, miffed that Tung ignored her appeal to rethink the
cutback, struck best the way she does best - in anger. "I have
directed the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA)
board to temporarily suspend the processing of all contracts," for
domestic helpers in Hong Kong she said according to published
reports. That will leave around 10,300 job orders from Hong Kong
that are currently unfilled, well, unfilled.
And that number will grow. The POEA in a typical week processes
somewhere around 2,000 employment contracts. Since each of those
jobs is worth HK$3,270 or US$425 a month, the termination -
depending on how temporary it turns out to be - could eventually
represent lost
revenues to the tune of US$76 million a month, or close to US$1
billion a year. That's quite a lot of money to say goodbye to in a
fit of anger, obviously.
That fact certainly hasn't gone unnoticed by the domestic helpers. A
spokesperson for the Asian Migrant Coordinating Body, Connie
Bragas-Regalado, reportedly called Ms. Arroyo's decision
"irrational" and "irresponsible." And she pointedly noted that the
government has
offered no alternative in lieu of the lost Hong Kong jobs. Ms.
Bragas-Regalado is doubtful the suspension of new contracts will
matter much when it comes to pressuring Mr. Tung. "We do not need
empty threats that further put our jobs in jeopardy," she
complained.
The suspension is also likely to leave Hong Kong employers
dissatisfied. After all, there's got to be some pretty good reasons
why Filipinos comprise the vast majority of domestic helpers. Their
attributes, if other surveys of the quality of Filipino workers are
to serve as a guide, include a highly motivated work ethic, honesty,
reliability, and genuine concern for the families they serve and the
children they do so much to raise. And they speak English.
Not everyone will be displeased, however, with these developments. A
pull back in the availability of Filipino helpers will result in
increased opportunity for Indonesians, Thais, and Nepalese who
provide the somewhat less than 30 percent of the domestic helper
jobs
Filipinos don't fill. And it is their families that will instead
enjoy the fruits of their work, as those millions of dollars are
sent to Indonesia, Thailand, and Nepal instead of the Philippines.
Now, I've never been very excited about the idea of a country
exporting talent. In an ideal world, the idea is to import talent to
boost domestic growth. But because successive governments have been
unable to create enough jobs for the Philippines' fast-growing work
force, there's been little choice but to exploit opportunities
overseas. But like early retirement for the private sector which
usually results in the best and brightest jumping ship, those taking
domestic helper jobs overseas are among our best educated, and those
we depend upon here to educate future generations of Filipinos.
Instead, they educate future generations in Hong Kong and many other
countries.
And more are on their way. Because around four Filipinos are born
every minute, the Philippines has the youngest population in Asia.
Over 66 percent of all Filipinos are below 30 years of age. About 79
percent are 40 and below. This is a pretty interesting statistic for
a number of reasons. As a brief aside, one of the most interesting
reasons is that it seems pretty clear to me that young Filipinos
will elect the next president of this country in 2004. That's a
refreshing thought because it offers the prospect of bringing in an
entirely new
set of leaders with better ideas about how to get the country
moving.
But in the meantime, it means that the Philippines has an enormous
resource in the form of a population dominated by potentially
value-producing young people. How to put them to work deserves some
thoughtful, rather than reactive, contemplation. One thing for sure
is that cutting off opportunity certainly isn't going to help them,
and it's not going to create any fairy tales.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing director of consultancy
TeamAsia and the author of three books on Asian economies and
companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian Places, of which he is
a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently at work on High
Visibility: The
Making and Marketing of Asian Professionals into Celebrities. Write
him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
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