At least 2,500 Philippine workers have lost their jobs in Taiwan amid the global economic slowdown and more are expected to be sent home in the coming months, the Philippine government said last week.
A total of 2,500 Filipinos were laid off by factories in Taiwan adjusting to lower global demand, records kept by the Philippine Labor Department’s Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) showed.
The government agency expects the number to double this year unless there is a rapid global recovery — which seems unlikely at the moment.
Some 8 million Filipinos work or live abroad, remitting an estimated US$15 billion to their families back home in an effort that helps keep the Philippines economy afloat.
Taiwan employed some 90,000 Filipinos at the start of the crisis last year, said Jennifer Manalili, head of the POEA.
More than 100 were sent home last month, most of them workers in Taiwan’s microchip factories.
Philippine Labor Secretary Marianito Roque told reporters that Manila would be sending a team to Taiwan to help the Filipinos who lost their factory jobs.
“In the next two weeks, we will deploy an advance reintegration team to Taiwan to assist the affected OFWs [overseas Philippine workers],” Roque said.
The team would canvass employers “for possible redeployment before they return to the country, or referrals to other companies there,” he said.
Manalili said Manila considers Taiwan’s export manufacturing sector to be “vulnerable” as the financial crisis deepens.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also