The Kuala Lumpur report on ASEAN integration

Dateline, KL, Malaysia: Reporting from the sixty-third floor of Tower One of the PETRONAS Twin Towers where I have an important meeting with Encik Dr Rizal Abdullah, and Puan Amy Abrizah Ab Asiz, senior HR executives of Petronas and their staff. We have agreed that the top HR lady of Petronas will come to Cebu this September 17 for the National Conference of the PMAP (People Management Association of the Philippines) to speak on the Malaysian Best HR Practices Across the ASEAN Region In The Context of the Integration. Earlier, we have also visited the corporate headquarters of MAYBANK and we have met a topnotch Industrial Relations Expert in Malaysia, who is the Executive Vice President of MAYBANK Global. He agreed to join us in Cebu to speak on IR CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES in the ASEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY.

Today, we also have concluded an agreement with the Indian Malaysian lawyer, Mr Aresandiran, J, president and COO of the MIHRM (MALAYSIAN INSTITUTE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT) M, the counterpart organization of PMAP in Malaysia that he, along with the HR top honchos of Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Brunei will come to the Philippines to organize the HR Support Commission for the Asean Economic Community and the Asean Integration, with its secretariat to be located in Manila. These three meetings with Petronas, Maybank, and the MIRHM constitute as the three pronged anchors of our official mission to Malaysia, with the fourth one being to spread the good news of the ASEAN INTEGRATION to the Filipino communities in Malaysia.

When we arrived we had a presentation to the Office of the Ambassador and the entire Embassy staff on the emerging opportunities for, and threats to, our human capital given the immediacy of the Asean Economic Community. This is PMAP's advocacy this year under our leadership as National President. We have fulfilled our entire mission and even more because we have met a lot of Malaysian friends, Malay, Chinese, and Indian, who are employing Filipinos and they are quite apprehensive about the impact of the integration to both the employers and the human capital. However, after my presentation, they have expressed confidence that we can cope and even come out winners in and out of the integration process.

We have visited the Filipino Workers' Resource Center  that I founded when I was the Labor Attache to Malaysia from 2005 to 2008, and we shared the integration process and prospects to our migrant workers. We also visited the St Johns Cathedral Skills Training Program that complements the FWRC and other government thrusts on caring and developing the Filipinos in Malaysia. I have also checked with the former domestic helpers that I sent to universities in the Philippines and studied and completed nursing, engineering and other courses. Former maids are now working with pride in hospitals and medical institutions all over Malaysia. Our philanthropist, Datuk Lim Sun Hoe, already passed away last year but all my 20 scholars finished their respective courses with the endowment which the estate of the donor directly remitted to the schools.

I have met our Ambassador, Eduardo Malaya, the Consul General, Medardo Macaraig, Consul Julius Herrera, all labor attaches, welfare officers, and the attaches from DSWD, PAG-IBIG, SSS, Police and Military, Colonel Bacon from Carcar, Cebu. The embassy is well-managed and the Filipinos are happy except for some problems that are normal and manageable. The Filipino community leaders from KL, Selangor, Johor, Kuantan, Pahang, Penang, even from Sabah, Sarawak, Labuan and Malacca and Teranngganu came and were very happy to meet the former labor attache and now president of PMAP. The mission was very successful and above all, I have established the first ever chapter of PMAP outside the Philippines. I have met Princess Becky M Leogardo, a brilliant, HR-oriented people leader and people manager, and a multi-billionaire Filipina beauty products magnate, who will most probably be the president of PMAP's first ever chapter abroad.

ASEAN integration is a hard nut to crack, but we are coping. We are a bit late, compared to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand as well as Indonesia, which prepared their people as early as 1997. But, as usual, the Filipinos will win because of our passion, our courage and our spirit of ''can do'.' As we always say in PMAP, yes, we can and yes, we will. And so, reporting from the 63rd level of Tower One in the Petronas Twin Towers, in Kuala Lumpur, this is JBJ, the servant leader of all Filipino human capital quite sick with fever from Bicol Luzon summit, still, with our last ounce of energy, waving the PMAP flag, and overlooking the whole of Kuala Lumpur, daring to say: Mabuhay.