Instead of laying down in concrete terms his administration’s plans and programs for the Filipino people, President Aquino merely “picked good apples” when he delivered his State of the Nation Address.
Millions of overseas Filipino workers watched, via Internet, P-Noy deliver his SONA, hoping that they would hear his administration’s programs and plans for OFWs and their dependents. Unfortunately, as he did last year, he just thanked the OFWs for their remittances, which helped keep the country’s economy afloat; he mentioned nothing about plans and programs to uplift their conditions.
We doubt if the 500,000 jobs posted in Philjobsnet that he mentioned are indeed available. Many of the 500,000 jobs may just exist in recruitment agencies’ databanks of speculative job openings advertised by foreign employers.
What is disgusting is this: P-Noy did acknowledge “job mismatches” for which reason he vowed to revisit the Philippine schools’ curricula so that these could meet the requirements of the job market. Except that the requirements he was referring to were those of foreign companies, not those of the Philippine industries. What he obviously wanted was to fill the needs of job markets abroad, not to improve our agrarian-based economy in the direction of national industrialization and development. The 1 million jobs that P-Noy said were created last year are not all local jobs. Many are overseas jobs.
P-Noy failed to outline in concrete terms how to create or generate local jobs. Of course, we expect decent local jobs, not just overseas jobs that are demeaning and dangerous to OFWs who work abroad without any protection from abuses and labor malpractices.
From P-Noy’s second SONA, we cannot visualize where the Philippines is heading. P-Noy failed to present a clear vision for the country. A graft-free Philippines is not enough, but even so, not one corrupt official of the previous Arroyo administration has been sent to jail.
—JOHN LEONARD MONTERONA,
regional coordinator,
Migrante-Middle East,
migranteme@gmail.com