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IN these trying times, thousands of Cebuanos seeking greener pasture abroad flocked to the Cebu City Sports Complex to try their luck for any kind of jobs abroad.
Gene Tuastumban, a licensed pharmacist working in a small pharmacy in Mandaue City, said she would rather do odd jobs such as dish washing and milking a cow in foreign countries than practice her profession here in the country.
?The wage here in the Philippines could not suffice for the needs of single woman. how much more for married people,? said Tuastumban in Cebuano when asked why she wanted to work abroad.
Tuastumban is one of the thousands of people who lined up and did all the hassles of getting registered and screened just to pass an application during the overseas job fair yesterday at the Cebu City Sports Center.
She said she would do any job as long as it is ?legal? with a condition that her hard work will be compensated with dollars and not in peso.
Of the estimated 4,000 people who joined the job fair, most of the applicants are currently employed.
Maribel Gelaga, a computer teacher of a private school, said she was willing to try her luck as a factory worker or an encoder abroad.
?I am hoping that I could pass the screening so that I could go abroad even without experience as a factory worker,? said Gelaga in Cebuano. She was carrying her application papers while waiting for her turn to be screened.
Gelaga said her income as a teacher is not enough for her family especially with the soaring prices of basic commodities.
A secretary, who works from a law firm who refused to be identified, said she was disillusioned with the government which always promises to increase wages.
She said she was even willing to wash dishes abroad as long as the pay is right.
?It's difficult here in the Philippines where the wage increase takes too long. It's better to just wash dishes abroad as long as the pay is high,?said the secretary in Cebuano. She is a graduate of Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM) and she wants to work in New Zealand.
Another applicant, Ramil Defontorum, said he has been unemployed for the past year.
He criticized the government for not providing enough jobs for the people.
?Here in the Philippines, jobs are difficult to find and if there are available jobs the pay is so low,? said Defontorum who was bringing along a passport to make sure he will be hired as a factory worker for Taiwan.
Defontorum has only a year left to graduate in a Criminology course but he had no plans of finishing his course.
He instead intends to enroll in vocational courses, which can make working abroad easier.
But among the thousands of applicants only a few could go abroad.
?In our experience in our previous job fairs, there are more or less 300 applicants for every job fair who could really go abroad,? said Fidel Magno assistant Department Head of the Department of Manpower Development and Placement of the Cebu City government.
Most of the applicants could not make their way to their dream overseas job because most of them have fabricated documents and lack working experience.
Magno said majority of the agencies need five years experience related to the job that is being applied. Overseas jobs need an employer to employer relationship and that trainings are not enough to be hired.
Magno said they could not monitor the situations of their applicants when they are already outside the country since it is already the responsibility of the agencies who sent them abroad.
But he assured the safety of the applicants since all the 38 locally based and Manila based agencies who joined the fair are Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) registered.
According to Magno, almost 8,000 were interviewed by different recruitment agencies.
In a 2006 Philippine Overseas and Employment Agency data, there were 1,221,417 overseas Filipino workers.
Of these number, 28,129 came from Central Visayas.
Meanwhile, as professionals wanted to go abroad, about 50 percent of farmers had left the mountain barangays to the cities to find alternative jobs so that they can cope with their daily needs.
Nick Abasolo, chairman of the Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) did not give exact figures of the farmers, who migrated in the urban areas and in the cities but he said that most of them from the third district particularly in Barili, Balamban and Toledo City.
He said , the farmers left their farms because they could not increase their production due to the high cost of the fertilizers, no irrigation projects and not enough support from the government.
In Toledo City, Abasolo said that the local government willing to subsidize 50 percent of the price of the fertilizers but he said the farmers still could not afford it.
He cited his owned rice farming which he will only earn an equivalent of P13.00 a day of his 4-month harvest of his rice production.
Abasolo said that these farmers are usually found alternative jobs in the city like being trisikad drivers, construction workers or sidewalk vendors. /Correspondents Marian Z. Codilla and Chris A. Ligan
