Jobless Filipinos
WITHOUT doubt, the “crippling” coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continues to worsen the joblessness and underemployment problems in the country.
And to think that government authorities have been trying to reopen the domestic economy by easing quarantine restrictions and allowing more business firms to reopen.
Official records at the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that the total number of unemployed Filipinos at end-December 2021 was estimated at 3.27 million.
The figure was higher by 113,000 from the 3.16 million recorded the previous month, according to the results of the authority’s latest Labor Force Survey (LFS).
But this was an improvement from the 4.5 million figure in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, when the government imposed paralyzing quarantine restrictions.
Since the pandemic raged across the globe, many manpower-importing nations, including Saudi Arabia, were forced to send home thousands of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
“Ang mga pinauwing migrant worker ay dumagdag sa bilang ng mga kababayan nating nawalan ng trabaho sa pagsasara ng mga lokal na negosyo,” lamented a displaced janitor.
Aware of the plight of the country’s workers, the government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development, came up with various pro-poor undertakings.
Among them was the Social Amelioration Program (SAP). “Dito maraming mahihirap ang tumanggap ng cash assistance mula sa gobyerno nasyonal,” said a farmer.
The government hopes to address the joblessness and underemployment problems by allowing more business establishments to reopen not only in the metropolis but elsewhere.
Dapat lang!
