Our growing partnership with Japan
Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2019 16:20:03 +0000
THERE was very good news from Japan early this week. Secretary Silvestre Bello III of the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) said officials of DoLE and Japan’s Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs, Health, Labor and Welfare, and National Police will sign on Tuesday an agreement providing for a new status and protection for “Specified Skilled Workers” in Japan.
The agreement will streamline recruitment processes, promote the welfare and protection of skilled foreign workers, grant them residence status, and establish a joint committee for the resolution of issues that may arise and work for the continued improvement of the system.
The specified skills covered in the agreement are in health care, construction, building maintenance, food services, industrial machinery, electronics, food manufacturing, agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, parts and tooling, and aviation.
These are precisely the principal areas in which millions of Filipinos are working today in various countries all over the world, where they are generally recognized, accepted, and preferred by their foreign employers. Thus Japan said that when some 350,000 skilled job openings become available next month, it expects more one-third of them to go to Filipinos. That would be at least 100,000 jobs for our workers.
This is the first half of this latest good news from Japan. The other half is the announcement also this week that several Japanese companies have decided to invest a total of $1.24 billion in new and expansion projects in the Philippines. The new projects are expected to generate 16,000 jobs in manufacturing, agriculture, retail, real estate, automotive, and education.
The biggest of these investments are $250 million in poultry farms and egg production, $76 million in real estate and affordable housing, $46 million in manufacturing and automobile parts, and $19.2 million in a project to convert pineapple waste to biogas to produce electricity.
All these new enterprises will be hiring some 16,000 Filipino workers. They are not as many as the over 100,000 that will soon be hired for work in Japan, but their efforts will be for domestic companies whose production will count as part of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). They will also be working here in their own land, living with their own families, which is the ultimate goal of many of our overseas Filipino workers today who have sought work abroad because they cannot find it here.
Japan today is the biggest market for Philippine exports. With its announcement of employment for so many Filipino workers and its big investments in Philippine enterprises, Japan will become an even bigger partner in our Philippine development efforts.