Despite the global economic crunch, demand for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) for job positions abroad remains high and will continue to increase because of newly forged labor agreements between the Philippines and some host countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, Guam and Japan. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported on Friday that the Philippine government has entered into bilateral agreements with said countries and will provide close to 50,000 job positions before the year 2009 ends. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are in need of nurses, doctors, domestic workers and skilled workers for its booming construction industry where hospitals and buildings are needed to be built. It is the same with Canada where the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held. Canada, France, Australia and France have an aging population in the coming years that its senior citizens needed nurses and caregivers, according to the labor department. Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said Guam expressed it formal request for some 2,000 construction workers in its project to transfer the US Military base from Japan to Marianas Islands. Japan, on the other hand, under the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement will be receiving 1, 600 nurses and caregivers until the last quarter of 2009. The country likewise has just entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with South Korea aimed at hiring up to 5,000 Filipino workers in the South Korean manufacturing industry and other sectors within the next 10 months. Roque also reported that the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Tripoli has started talks with the Libyan Health Ministry for the recruitment of about 4,000 Filipino medical workers in Libya. Roque further said that 3,000 OFWs leave the Philippines to work abroad everyday. There are now a total of eight million OFWs working in various countries around the world. Saudi Arabia has the highest number of deployed OFWs with two million Filipinos working in this Middle East kingdom. Said OFWs are the major sources of remittances for the Philippines that have been growing year by year. Remittances from US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, UK, Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Italy, and Germany reached a total of US$7.0 billion for the first half of the year, records at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas showed.
