Through No Fault, Through Fault

A couple of blocks down our street you come to a cross street and if you turn left and walk maybe about 100 meters you’ll find the Santos residence where Ruby and her sister Ophelia have just returned from Hong Kong to this small community.  Ophelia specializes in child care, Ruby is a house cleaner. They had been hired, three years ago, to take the load off Mrs. Yui whose husband passed on from cancer.  While Mr. Yui thought he was leaving his family with enough money to live a comfortable life, his accumulated investments suffered the same as many derivatives in the world and tanked.

Mrs. Yui was forced to take a job and as she had three children to raise, she needed help with keeping their house in good order as well as making sure the kids were looked after by a competent maid. As stated, that was three years ago.  Nearly three weeks have passed since Mrs. Yui unfortunately and unexpectedly  lost her job and was forced to release the sisters from their duties and send them back to the Philippines. 

The parting of both girls from a family to whom they had grown close was both tearful and grim.  What were all these people going to do now?  I don’t live in Hong Kong anymore but I can speak for the two sisters having met them, and their future is far from what may be considered bright.

The Manila government has, since the economic down-turn, talked out of both sides of its mouth, a different message from each side.  Message one: things are going to get tough so be prepared; message two: the Philippines plans to increase their Offshore Workers by 100 percent.  However nobody has the faintest idea of where these workers will go.  Unfortunately the reverse is true; the Overseas Workers are coming home.

The addition of two young unmarried women to the Santos household presents a problem all too familiar with Filipinos as the down-turn gets worse.  How does their father earn enough money to support his daughters when he has two boys and a third daughter living at home with him and his wife to support as well?  Added to the problem: the youngest daughter, Joy, has a baby and her husband is out of work — while the two sons of Emmanuel Santos can, at best bring in a few pesos by doing part-time labour.  When they feel like it.

The situation facing this family is repeating itself everywhere over here.  More and more, ‘planes are arriving at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino Airport carrying members of the overseas work force who have found themselves with either an un-renewed contract or simply let go because, as in the case with Mrs. Yui, there is no money to pay their salary.  On top of that, the sisters were, until three weeks ago, the main bread-winners, sending home half their salaries which in turn, largely supported the rest of those in the household.  Now the mouths to feed have increased and the money has been cut drastically.  

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On the surface, this looks pitiful but things are much worse than most people from developed nations understand.  To begin with, Emmanuel Santos can usually find work picking mangoes during mango season (now) or rice when the crops come in (soon) or try his best to keep employed as a migrant worker at the vegetable and tobacco fields in northern Luzon, the main Island in the Philippines where Manila is situated.  One thing’s for certain: he won’t get rich.  Pay is poor and work is scarce. A parallel would be the ‘hungry thirties’ during the last great depression.  

Emmanuel is willing; indeed he must, spend his life hoping for often back-breaking work to help keep his family fed.  His sons are a different story.  Both are lazy, shiftless, and undependable; both are strung out on a cheap, debilitating drug known as Shabu – bathtub Crystal Methamphetamine –  garbage.  It is the drug of choice in this country, easy to muster the ingredients, easy to make, easy to sell.  My wife and I once drove home two young men who had been visiting with us.  The trip was five kilometers and when we dropped them off they told us that between our house and theirs, at least 200 people were indulging in Shabu.  It struck me that we had passed only about double that number.  Like drugs all over the world Shabu is a scourge but in this country, where work is not a privilege but a dire necessity, it is triply unproductive.

This example brings up a more pertinent fact.  Filipino women are hard workers.  It is in their genes.  From the time they wake up in the morning to the time they retire, all but maybe two hours are spent in some form of labour: housework, tending animals, washing clothes, selling a home-made product.  There is no worker like a Filipina.  The huge majority of Overseas Workers are women. It can be said that women are the backbone of this country.

On the other hand male Filipinos are, generally speaking, untrustworthy, shy away from steady work and  would rather shoot hoops with their pals than engage in helping the family survive.  Trying to hire a Filipino man to do some needed work around the house is by no means a sure thing – the chance that he will  show up are even-steven. Most often there is no explanation, he just doesn’t appear.  If he does offer an excuse it is usually that he was sick or that a member of his family (maybe a cousin’s uncle by marriage) has died.  He will lie. 

This is not to say that all Filipino men are useless bums, I know several who are hard working and diligent.  But they are the ones who have some honour, pride and possess a motivational spirit –characteristics not readily found here.  Many Filipinos will cheat you if they think they can get away with it.  And they will leave you in the lurch, holding an expensive piece of machinery while they, or their family decide it is more important to work for uncle Marciano who needs someone to help him pick corn.  In other words, one can seldom — very seldom — trust a Filipino man to fullfill and obligation.

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There is much more to tell about this country and its people.  But, for now,  it is all too evident that the countryside, littered and filthy, reeks of poverty because the inhabitants are governed by a criminal faction, and because the heads of families, with few exceptions, have stopped trying to gain a foothold on a creditable life.  Sloth replaces ambition. They just don’t care.  A bit of fish and a few bowls of rice is food enough; their precious Shabu parties take precedence over perseverance and the result is un-ending poverty, a landscape dotted with shame and corruption running from one end of this archipelago to the other.

I do not loath the Filipino people or even dislike them, the opposite, in many cases, is true.  All of us have an aversion to laziness and to those we cannot trust. However Filipinos of both sexes are often delightful, happy … indeed, almost joyous people in the face of what they have always known: subservience and poverty. 

The Pinoy are now being made to suffer even more as victims of the economic catastrophe that has struck the world.  But they must somehow learn that help is hard to come by in 2009, their government has not made many friends, if any —  and provenance has not been kind.  During this time of extremes,  exacerbated by the return of their overseas workforce, no help will come from, or to, a corrupt government.  And the people, as implied by their hero Jose Rizal, must “rise with the sun” and live productively.  Put somewhat differently: it’s time they got their shit together.

 

 

Forgotten in the Shuffle

The recession that has hit so many parts of the world, in particular Japan and the United States, has had far-reaching effects on people reliant on these two economic giants in many ways.  Everyone is familiar with the ‘big’ news, the slippage in the bourses, the dependency on foreign oil, the need to restructure industry giants such as the car companies and the mortgage problems facing the USA.  However the Philippines have also suffered its share of “recession blues”.

Recently Philippine Air Lines began a service every day to Canada and the US whereas up until now service had been limited to four days a week in some cases, depending on the destination. Of course PAL played it up as being ‘new and better service’ to the public while in reality it is to facilitate the number of Filipino workers who have been laid off by their employers in several countries throughout the world, mainly Japan and The US and are returning home.

This is not helping the Philippine economy which is terminally unhealthy anyway.  As a matter of fact it’s disastrous.   Overseas workers, whom I mentioned last time account for between 16 and 20% of this nation’s economy are coming home in droves, cut loose as an expense no longer capable of being maintained by upper middle class Westerners. The Manila government is not in a hurry to expose this exodus.  It controls the media and determines which news shall be made public and which shall stay under wraps and incidentally, which news shall be dreamed up and fed like candy to children.

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Little word is spread in the media regarding the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW’s) but it travels from house to house, village to village and city to city by word of mouth.  The populace has absolutely no trust in its government and ignores the headlined stories of the latest word from Malacanang Palace — which they indeed should.  Much of that information is nothing more than BS.  The English Language Press op-ed columnists can print what they want and not risk the strong arm of President Arroyo and her thugs because few of the nearly 100-million Filipinos read English.  The local language Press is filled with Beauty Contest winners and gossip plus ‘flower show’ events featuring Ms Arroyo and her husband Mike, the ‘first gentleman’, a noted criminal.

The English language writers are not considered dangerous as they are read by so few and it is merely their word again hers and after all, she is the President.  But most Filipinos are aware of what goes on.  I do not recall ever having spoken on the subject of The Philippine government with a knowledgeable Filipino who does not offer a guilty smile when asked if he or she is not aware of the extent of corruption which exists and controls his or her country by the heads of government.  It is a way of life, inspired by the Spanish in the same manner as are most Spanish-colonized countries world-wide.

The problems caused by the return of the OFW’s are creating an increasing need for people to live on their own resources.  In other words subsistence. Grow and raise your own food. With the money earned by this returning workforce cut off it is only to be expected the population must face hardship. However instead of assisting the people, the government merely increases taxes, and goes about working its scams in a variety of ways, most of them transparent to the public. 

One example of this is companies that charge a premium on purchases made through the use of credit cards.  Pay by cash and there is no problem however if you wish to put a large sum of money on, say, the purchase of an airline ticket and wish to use your credit card, some Travel Agencies will tack on an extra five percent.  A recent check with the Credit Card company in Manila which oversees all major credit cards — MasterCard, Visa and American Express — yielded the news that such charges are not permitted.  “We do not permit charging premiums” I was told. 

However this particular travel Agency will simply say those are our rules and if you wish to buy your ticket using Visa you will have to pay the added amount.  Completely illegal. Who’s going to call them on it and what would it get them?  When one starts to add up all the OFW’s in the US, four million in that country alone some of who are now either back in the Philippines or about to be (many use a Philippine Travel Agency), the five percent surcharge amounts to a considerable sum.  The premium is graft money.  It is a scam — and one way the government can use to retrieve some of the money lost when OFW’s can no longer send the bulk of their pay-cheques home to be used within the borders of the Philippine Islands. The government merely squeezes the Travel Agent.

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The Philippines has been, as stated above, in the grip of Corruption since the Islands were discovered by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan — in service to the Spanish Crown — five hundred years ago.  In the latter part of the 19^th century, the Philippine aboriginal people grew restless under the rule of the brutal Spaniards and the greedy Roman Catholic Church both of who, in concert with each other, conspired to keep the Filipino native under bondage — poor and submissive.  The people implored their one true hero, Jose Rizal to help them wrest control from their subjugators.  Rizal declined saying, correctly as it turned out, that the people were not ready for revolution and any insurgency would only end in defeat.  

Rizal’s two novels which told the story of the suffering Filipino people gave the Spanish all they needed to execute the man.  He was shot for having written against the Spanish and the Roman Catholics.  Rizal’s successor as national hero, Andres Bonafacio seen as defender of the poor, led a large movement against the Spanish in 1896; however he fell out with his own comrades of the upper class and was slaughtered in a bungled revolution.

Today, the Filipino people, many victims of the World recession, dream of a time when they might rule through honesty and do away with corrupt government.  It will never happen.  Since Ferdinand Marcos raped the county in the 70’s and was given permission to flee to Hawaii by the United States, the once proud South-East Asian tiger has dwindled to a despicable backwards slough largely due to a lack of sincere politics and led by a greedy would-be monarch, her lawless family and kow-towing members of a hopelessly inadequate Congress backed by the nation’s armed forces paid by Arroyo to defend her against a public who each day grows to despise her more.  

It is inconceivable that such a person could remain in control of a country while dragging it down, an individual twice as unpopular as Marcos she is not even allowed to attend large church services for fear of public unrest.  And while her countrymen come drifting back from the sinking ship which is The Western Recession one has to wonder just how long the Philippines can hold out.   

The Great Brain Drain

People from the Philippines, most of them under the age of 35 and a considerable number older want to get out. They want to get away from the country and live somewhere else.

And they do — millions of them. The reasons are not complex. There is no real law here – if you wish to plead your case before a magistrate you had better be prepared to pay the judge more than your opponent. As an example, if you are ripped off by, say, a Travel Agent, the TA will win because  in all likelihood the TA has more money available to pay graft than a private citizen. The average working Filipino earns around $80 to $90 US per month.

 Offshore labourers can earn 20 times what they are paid by Filipino contractors. Skilled workers can earn up to 50 times as much in Western Nations. Why would they want to stay in a country where filth and litter are omnipresent; ruled by a government with no interest in the people and police are almost non-existent or if they are it is to erect a blockade to check vehicle certificates. Laws that would bring the police running in most countries are non-existent or ignored. There is no use running down a speeder on one of the country’s few Expressways because the driver cannot pay anyway.

So they head overseas in droves. There are four million Filipino workers in the United States — the bulk of them women; two million in Saudi Arabia where many are men. In the case of women they specialize in care-giving, or work as domestic helpers and maids. Men drive the oil trucks and do the dirty work on the oil rigs of the Arab Middle East. They are hard workers, they do not complain and they are dependable. There are two reasons for this, the first: for several months before leaving home they are given a course by the foreign country to which they are headed aimed at familiarizing them with their new jobs. Secondly they are given a three day stern indoctrination by the Philippine government — threatened to behave or they and their families will suffer should they fail.

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Out of a total population claim of around 100-plus million — it is hard to be exact due to the vast number of vagrants — 11 million are overseas workers. This figure climbs at the rate of at least one million per year. And as stated in the last paragraph, most are unskilled labor, or at the most, lightly trained. The Brain Drain comes from the exodus of professionals: doctors, nurses, engineers, technicians, teachers and accountants. It is little wonder the Philippines have what is, for a large country, the worst technical infrastructure in the world. The telephone companies, television suppliers, Internet service providers and electrical companies all break down regularly and there is only lip-service paid to exhaust emissions. The answer is actually three-fold. One: the staff and management are poorly trained, two: the equipment is, in almost all cases, second hand — purchased from countries wanting to get rid of faulty apparatus, vehicles do not get serviced. And thirdly, employees simply don’t care.

But the filth of the Philippines and the vast unknowledgeable work force is not seen in places like the UK, the US and Canada which along with Malaysia and the UAE are the destinations of many OFW’s (Overseas Filipino Workers) as they are called at home. These OFW’s are perhaps the best foreign workers in any country in which they reside. Hard work is part of the Filipino ethic, especially women and the knowledge that they must perform (as ordered by their government) ensures that they are clean, resourceful, friendly and are willing to work long hours with but one day off per week.

They live frugally overseas, no hardship for people who had nothing when they lived at home. Their money, most of it, is sent back to the individual’s families left behind. The OFW is usually the bread-winner in Manila or Cebu or Davao, or the myriad of small towns that dot the archipelago. In this way the money circulates in the Philippines. The host country of the offshore workers does not benefit monetarily from their presence other than that they are fed which helps out Joe, the grocer.

I used to live in Hong Kong. In Central District there is a large grassy park located in front of the award winning architectural wonder which is the Hong Kong branch of the British banking giant HSBC. Here, an amazing sight presents itself once a week. On Sundays every square centimeter of that park is taken up with Filipinas, (the feminine form of Filipino ends in ‘a’). This scene is repeated in many other parks and open spaces in the Region. Hong Kong authorities even block off vehicular traffic to accommodate an estimated 140,000 maids, care-givers, and nurses who are generally lumped together and called ahmas, which means maid in Cantonese Chinese. When the women return home after dark, they have taken every pop-bottle and its cap, every scrap of paper, every book, game, and blanket; in fact they leave the place so clean, there is no need for a cleaning crew to clear away the mess. There simply is no mess.

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Filipino women, and men, spread all around the globe, form the largest group of offshore workers in the world, save one, Asian Indians. They account for approximately 15% (some say 20%) of the Gross National Income of the Philippines. The Filipino language, Tagalog, is the fifth most spoken language in the United States. In Canada there are nearly one-half million Filipinos in a country of only 31 million people. The UK employs nearly a quarter million. In the United Arab Emirates, Filipinos, as employees, are preferred to any other race. In Saudi Arabia, the same is true. My wife is a Filipina and lived in Saudi Arabia where she was isolated from others, confined to the home and made to wear the body covering common in that land. She stood it for two years; she was a specialized nurse to an elderly woman; but the life was so limiting she would not renew her contract and was offered a job in Hong Kong which she gladly accepted.

The current economic instability in the world is having an impact on Filipinos. The extent is not yet known, nor is the government likely to make the real figure known. Here in the Philippines, the cost of living is rising, many are surviving on subsistence.  People who find themselves in financial trouble will find no help from the corrupt government in Manila – there will be no financial bail-outs in this country where greed takes preference over assistance.

 Scams with passports are a favorite of the Foreign Affairs department: illegal passports are issued on purpose in order to make the citizen pay twice. This impacts on OFW’s who will find themselves trapped in a foreign land once the International Air Transport Association (IATA) imposes new rules involving machine readable passports beginning in 2010. The current Philippine passport is unacceptable.

But a Filipino, living with poverty much of his or her life, understands little of global economics. It is the same as how they view their government. Sure it’s corrupt, but ‘what can I do about it’ so they smile, go on with their job and put hardship out of mind and think pleasant thoughts. How about that Manny Pacquaio