Leaving

A survey was commissioned by a consumer goods company two decades ago to produce a profile of the Filipino youth. I can’t forget one of the major findings of the highschool age respondents: their principal ambition is to leave the country and work abroad.

That was at about the same time (Erap and GMA eras) that I decided to send my children abroad after college because I couldn’t see a good future for them here. Everything seemed unstable. We were starting to look like a Latin American banana republic, and the economy was being neglected because the Chief Executives were more worried about staying in power. In the meantime, the traditional elite’s self serving control of our economy made us lose ground to regional rivals.

Many of the young respondents to that survey were children of OFWs, who like their parents realized they too must leave the country to earn a decent living. The pain of separated families could be felt in the responses that I remember reading. This is no way to raise a family with a mother in Hong Kong and a father in Saudi Arabia, and only the Lola at home to raise the children. And if the husband stayed home, he squandered his wife’s earnings on a mistress.

When the elder Marcos first started to dispatch Filipinos to the Middle East to help build infrastructure the petrodollar rich countries needed, we thought it was a temporary measure. It took advantage of an opportunity that solved an unemployment problem at home, and the economy earned petrodollars too.

But temporary became permanent. Today, we have recognized that permanence by creating a Cabinet level department solely dedicated to look after our migrant workers. It is true that our people are our best natural resource and, as it turns out, our principal export as well. Today, as it was then, leaving the country is the way Pinoys believe they can have a better life.

Since exporting our own people has become a viable industry, we might as well focus on training those who want to go abroad in the most marketable skills. I mean, real training and not just diploma mills that sprouted to satisfy dreams of being nurses or crew of international shipping companies.

We should even be able to encourage recruiters for our nurses to support nursing schools so that graduates will have all the skills their clients are looking for. Right now, recruiters are helping with review classes so our nurses can pass the licensure examinations required to work abroad.

Manpower specialist Manny Geslani told me that 18,617 Filipino nurses took the latest NCLEX or National Council Licensure Examination for registered nurses in the USA. That’s almost double the number of nursing graduates who took NCLEX for the first time in 2021.

The demand for our nurses in US hospitals continues to rise with the huge shortage of health workers. My sister, a retired physician in the US, thinks that many hospitals in the US would find it difficult to operate without Filipino nurses.

During the COVID surge, some of our local hospitals declared being full even if not all the beds in their COVID wards were taken. They didn’t have enough nurses to take care of more patients.

Dr. Maria Rosario Vergeire, officer-in-charge of the Department of Health, said in a recent interview, that the Philippines has a shortage of more than 350,000 nurses.

Unfortunately, it is our government that has aggravated the situation by delaying and sometimes denying benefits due our nurses during the pandemic. Feeling unappreciated, they resign and pick up better employment options abroad.

I am told that about 40 percent of nurses in private hospitals have also resigned since the pandemic began. Of course, low wages and overwork are cited as reasons for leaving. Our private hospitals have to offer near-competitive wages. Or, like Medical City, offer a nursing job here as a pathway to join their nursing staff in Medical City Guam.

For now, the recruiters from the US and Canada are going after the most experienced nurses. They are on the lookout for specialists in dialysis for kidney centers, heart in cardiac centers, ICU. Filipino nurses say they are torn between love of country and the need to look after the future of their families. With the much larger pay and opportunities that working overseas can provide.

Moving abroad has also become more attractive because Western countries have now offered migrating nurses the opportunity to move their entire families, giving their children new and better opportunities not available here.

“That is my ambition. No matter how hard, I will take the risk, for my family and career advantage as well,” a Filipina nurse told a reporter of the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

That poses a problem. If they bring their families with them, they may not send as much money back home if at all. We are seeing permanent migration, not temporary work assignment, as is the case with Middle East employment.

When we had that New Year’s Day fiasco with air traffic control that closed our skies to aviation traffic, we found out that trained air traffic controllers are also now being pirated successfully by other countries. I am told that our ATCs are pirated by Qatar and Dubai by offering a really generous compensation package that include housing and allowing their families to join them.

The United Nations is also offering the highest remuneration for ATCs, not as salaries, but stipend and risk pay of about P1 million a month. ATCs join as UN volunteers.

Starting salary for CAAP ATCs is only P45,000 a month. Singapore offers P220,000; Thailand offers P120,000; Japan offers P192,000, and so on.

CAAP simply cannot match the offers our trained ATCs get. CAAP trains two classes of ATCs a year, with an average of only 40 graduates per class. They are training barely enough replacements for those who leave.

Oh well… Leaving has emerged as a good option for Filipinos who want to escape poverty. They can’t wait for the right things to happen. Our economy will likely suffer from long-standing bad national leadership for the foreseeable future.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected].Follow him on Twitter @boochanco