Over worked, under paid. How long do we need to put up with this kind of living in the Philippine soil.
True, Filipinos are good in enduring sufferings. As long as we can manage to keep our feet warm under our worned sheets, we will. It is how we lived. It is how we were taught.
But how long can we abide with our own ability to survive?
An independent research group said the Philippines still has the “worst” unemployment rate in Asia despite posting a 6.9-percent growth in gross domestic product.
In a statement, Ibon said economic growth “should not be used to divert public attention from fundamental problems of chronic joblessness and poverty.”
Citing the latest labor force survey data, Ibon said the unemployment rate in the country was set at 5.8 percent in January 2016, higher than slower-growing economies like China (4 percent), Vietnam (2.3 percent), Indonesia (5.5 percent), Malaysia (3.5 percent), and Thailand (1 percent).
The group said growth can be a “convenient” but “misleading” indicator of development.
Ibon said the number of underemployed and discouraged worker are also rapidly rising, noting that underemployed Filipinos increased by 847,000 to 7.7 million in January 2016 from the same period last year.
This was despite the fact that employment increased from 38.4 million in January 2015 to 39.2 million in January 2016, while the number of unemployed Filipinos supposedly fell from 2.7 million to 2.4 million in the same period. (http://business.inquirer.net/210532/ph-has-worst-unemployment-rate-despite-high-gdp-growth-research).
In the administration of Aquino, the youth sector are encouraged to be entrepreneurs. They, the National Youth Council, have continuedly preached that it is better and best that the youth will be engaged in entrepreneurship since there spread a job epidemic, if I may say, for the last decades.
Like this motivation can actually help the youth. It just become more frustrating when they cannot go to school because they do not have money to sustain their needs. It is even more disappointing when the program offer loans, yet it will take a century for it to be approved. So, I despised that idea. I disagree with that initiation. It is totally incomprehensible when the government is trying to push a system wherein in the middle of the process, the “benefactor” does not, as a matter of fact, benefited. They have to wait in line. Added misleading requirements. Imagine where those aspiring entrepreneurs will get their money to put a small business and jumpstart their career.
It would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
When planned and discussed, it seems like a piece of cake. But unfortunately, the government lacks initiative. It doesn’t drive the youth to seek the program. And the plan had its natural death.
What’s fueling to this unemployment in the Philippines is the time immemorial, well rooted and deep seethed contractualism.
It is just now, that a newly elected President of our country decided to end contractualism. This political position and business strategy had left many Filipinos, though skilled and qualified, jobless and no food to put into the mouths of their families.
Imagine you have applied for a position in a company, and they could only offer you 3 months of work. The company will put you on a temporary basis. You have provided them an impressive curriculum vitae. And yet, the fact remain, you are still temporary. You will be working 8 hours a day plus mandatory overtime. They will use you until you cannot take it any longer. They will impose incredible company prerogatives for you to be able to pass being a temp and be regularize.
It’s more like being a Sparta Warrior or a Knight of the Vale in a Philippine arena. You have three options. You can leave. Die or survive. It’s more than playing a game of thrones when you have to put a manager who is more psychotic than Ramsay Bolton.
So what will a poor heir to the throne of the Greyjoy do? Fight against the evil Queen Cersei? Or travel and find the Mother of Dragons Daenerys?
When we were colonized by the Spaniards, we experienced brutality, discrimination and under privileged.
Looking at our country right now exists a modern style of colonialism. Our government put so much love for these big companies to take advantage of our skills and intelligence to enrich themselves and deprive the working class.
Published and Owned by: JANETH F. ALMOGUERRA- Teacher III
