Economists worried that if the war dragged on or expanded, it would not only reduce the number of jobs for Filipinos in the Middle East but also hurt global economic growth and its demand for Filipino labor.
But Iraq is not Kuwait. Though the country is oil-rich, Iraqis are poor and the number of Filipinos employed there was dwindling for years before the 1991 Gulf War. Thousands of poor Iraqis will be looking for work when this war is over.
But where Filipinos may have the edge for companies rushing to rebuild the country is in their skills and education. Ninety-five percent of Filipinos can read, compared with only about 60 percent of Iraqis. And most Filipinos still learn English in school, a legacy of America's occupation of the country in the last century.
The Philippines has already lent a helping hand in the war against terror beyond cracking down on terrorist groups at home and expelling Iraqi diplomats thought to be helping them. Imported Filipino laborers and engineers, many working for less than the US minimum wage, helped build the detention center holding al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Even if Philippine companies fail to win a single contract in Iraq, Filipinos are likely to find work there, analysts and officials say. "Filipino workers would benefit because American companies could hire them," said Edser Trinidad, a senior analyst at BNP Paribas Peregrine Securities in Manila.
With US troops fighting in the heart of Baghdad, recruitment agencies in Manila say they are already seeing the first, tentative inquiries from US companies, including some of the same ones that hired Filipinos to work in Kuwait more than a decade ago. Those employers that do not have contacts with a Philippine recruitment agency can go to the Department of Labor and Employment's Government Placement Branch, which is dedicated to finding them Philippine employees.
RSS