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Maid in
the Philippines
By Michael Alan Hamlin
March 10, 2003
In the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan
starring Jennifer Lopez, a lowly maid in a five-star New York hotel
lives a Cinderella-like fairy tale. Dressing up in clothes left
behind in a room she is cleaning - as a lark - presents the opportunity
to meet - and be appreciated by - a wealthy hotel guest played by
Ralph Fiennes. The wealthy guest is swept off his feet, and a romance
ensues.
In the no-so-romantic comedy, Maid
in the Philippines, 170,000 domestic helpers from the Philippines
who work in Hong Kong - and represent a whopping 71 percent of all
domestic helpers in the former colony - get robbed by both Hong
Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa and Philippine president Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo. Tung, desperate to rein in a growing budget deficit,
slashed minimum monthly wages for domestic helpers last week and
turned their lost earnings into a tax his government will collect
from the maids' employers.
Ms. Arroyo, miffed that Tung ignored
her appeal to rethink the cutback, struck best the way she does
best - in anger. "I have directed the Philippine Overseas Employment
Administration (POEA) board to temporarily suspend the processing
of all contracts," for domestic helpers in Hong Kong she said
according to published reports. That will leave around 10,300 job
orders from Hong Kong that are currently unfilled, well, unfilled.
And that number will grow. The POEA
in a typical week processes somewhere around 2,000 employment contracts.
Since each of those jobs is worth HK$3,270 or US$425 a month, the
termination - depending on how temporary it turns out to be - could
eventually represent lost revenues to the tune of US$76 million
a month, or close to US$1 billion a year. That's quite a lot of
money to say goodbye to in a fit of anger, obviously.
That fact certainly hasn't gone unnoticed
by the domestic helpers. A spokesperson for the Asian Migrant Coordinating
Body, Connie Bragas-Regalado, reportedly called Ms. Arroyo's decision
"irrational" and "irresponsible." And she pointedly
noted that the government has offered no alternative in lieu of
the lost Hong Kong jobs. Ms. Bragas-Regalado is doubtful the suspension
of new contracts will matter much when it comes to pressuring Mr.
Tung. "We do not need empty threats that further put our jobs
in jeopardy," she complained.
The suspension is also likely to
leave Hong Kong employers dissatisfied. After all, there's got to
be some pretty good reasons why Filipinos comprise the vast majority
of domestic helpers. Their attributes, if other surveys of the quality
of Filipino workers are to serve as a guide, include a highly motivated
work ethic, honesty, reliability, and genuine concern for the families
they serve and the children they do so much to raise. And they speak
English.
Not everyone will be displeased,
however, with these developments. A pull back in the availability
of Filipino helpers will result in increased opportunity for Indonesians,
Thais, and Nepalese who provide the somewhat less than 30 percent
of the domestic helper jobs Filipinos don't fill. And it is their
families that will instead enjoy the fruits of their work, as those
millions of dollars are sent to Indonesia, Thailand, and Nepal instead
of the Philippines.
Now, I've never been very excited
about the idea of a country exporting talent. In an ideal world,
the idea is to import talent to boost domestic growth. But because
successive governments have been unable to create enough jobs for
the Philippines' fast-growing work force, there's been little choice
but to exploit opportunities overseas. But like early retirement
for the private sector which usually results in the best and brightest
jumping ship, those taking domestic helper jobs overseas are among
our best educated, and those we depend upon here to educate future
generations of Filipinos. Instead, they educate future generations
in Hong Kong and many other countries.
And more are on their way. Because
around four Filipinos are born every minute, the Philippines has
the youngest population in Asia. Over 66 percent of all Filipinos
are below 30 years of age. About 79 percent are 40 and below. This
is a pretty interesting statistic for a number of reasons. As a
brief aside, one of the most interesting reasons is that it seems
pretty clear to me that young Filipinos will elect the next president
of this country in 2004. That's a refreshing thought because it
offers the prospect of bringing in an entirely new set of leaders
with better ideas about how to get the country moving.
But in the meantime, it means that
the Philippines has an enormous resource in the form of a population
dominated by potentially value-producing young people. How to put
them to work deserves some thoughtful, rather than reactive, contemplation.
One thing for sure is that cutting off opportunity certainly isn't
going to help them, and it's not going to create any fairy tales.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently
at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Asian Professionals
into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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