By Vito Barcelo
At least 2.5 million Filipino women have left the country to work as domestic helpers in various parts of the world from 1992 up to mid-2017 to find greener pastures and income for their families back home, a migration and recruitment expert said Tuesday.
Based on the records of the Philippine Overseas and Employment Agency, Filipino women started migrating in 1992 to work as domestic helpers, recruitment and migration expert Emmanuel S. Geslani said.
Geslani said the migration figure in 2015 was 2.067 million, plus the 2016 deployment of 275,893 women and the current 137,240 migrants in the first six months of 2017 make a grand total of 2,480,133 Filipina domestic helpers for the past three decades.
This official figure does not include almost 150,000 household service workers that were trafficked to Lebanon, Syria and UAE from 2008 to 2017 by illegal recruitment syndicates, he said.
The major concern, Geslani said, is the increasing trend of migrant workers “that signifies a large-scale human capital flight, also known as a ‘brain drain,’ which would greatly affect the progress and development of the Philippines.”
Approximately 12 percent of the total population of the Philippines lives overseas. Over the past years, the figure has been rising; every hour, around 950 migrant workers leave the Philippines, according to the Philippine Commission on Population.
Geslani said the women primarily migrate in search of better job opportunities and better life conditions, often leaving behind their families and relatives in the Philippines, in the hopes of sending back remittances to better their economic and social status, and one day finding a way to help them migrate abroad, too.
“Poverty is the main cause of Filipina migration, attracted by the minimum salary of US$400 per month, double that of the $200 [rate] in 2007. Lack of gainful employment for high school graduates, especially in the South and Mindanao, are encouraging many Filipina women to work overseas to provide for their families and help in the education of their children,” he said.
The top destination for Filipino household service workers (HSWs) in 2016 is Saudi Arabia with 107,298 migrants, followed by Kuwait (57,726) and Hong Kong (41,925), comprising 75 percent of the total deployment for domestic helpers in 2016.
Accounting for the remaining 25 percent for 2016 are Qatar (22,877), Singapore (13,428), Jordan (7,736), Malaysia (7,591), Oman (7,400), Bahrain (5,123), Cyprus (1,067), United Arab Emirates (432) and other destinations (2,460).
Saudi, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Qatar, Oman and Jordan “accounted for 89.05 percent of total HSW deployment in 2016. Except for Hong Kong, the rest of the countries are in the Middle East,” he added.