Philippines will supply labor to rebuild Iraq

Of all the companies and countries clamoring for a piece of Iraq's reconstruction, one is virtually certain to be invited: the Philippines.

No which companies ultimately win contracts from Washington to rebuild Iraq's roads, airports, hospitals or other infrastructure, officials in Manila expect to supply thousands of Filipino laborers to them. "I'm confident that if they're looking for skilled workers, they'll come to us," said Patricia Tomas, the Philippines' secretary of labor and employment.

Inexpensive labor is one of the Philippines' most lucrative exports. Faced with record unemployment at home, where the average income is just over US$1,000 a year, about 7 million Filipinos choose to work overseas.

Whether work as doctors, nurses, maids or nannies, the US$7 billion they send home to relatives each year is one of the country's most important sources of hard currency.

Analysts economists in Manila hope the country will soon be able to count on income earned in Iraq. About US$2.5 billion of the Bush administration's US$80 billion war budget has been allocated for rebuilding Iraq, a task that could cost as much as US$100 billion. Last month, Washington awarded a US$4.8 million contract to rebuild the port at Umm Qasr to Stevedoring Services of America, based in Seattle. And Bechtel, based in San Francisco, is said to be a front-runner for a contract to rehabilitate the country's vast oil industry.

The exclusion of any foreign bids has sparked protests from Britain, America's main ally in the war, and coincided with a determined bid by France and Germany for greater participation in the clean-up after a war they opposed from the start.

Smaller of the "coalition of the willing," meanwhile, are quietly positioning themselves for their share of the spoils. Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, for example, hope that sending chemical-weapon specialists will entitle them to contracts. South Korea intends to send 700 medical and engineering workers to smooth a return by its big construction companies to a market they abandoned after the 1991 Gulf War.

The Philippines has yet to make an official offer, but President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told local reporters last week that her government was prepared to send peacekeepers, doctors, nurses, engineers and construction workers.

Responding criticism that joining the US-led coalition might expose the Philippines to further reprisals by Muslim insurgents in the country's south, a spokesman for Arroyo tried to highlight the economic advantages, saying coalition members were assured of getting "first crack at the development efforts."

In the previous Gulf War, the Philippines sent medical teams to Saudi Arabia to treat the wounded. When the war was over, Filipinos poured back into Kuwait, first to help extinguish oil well fires, working for companies like Bechtel, Brown & Root and Blount. Afterward, they found jobs as domestic helpers, waiters and mechanics.

And only in Kuwait. From just 500,000 before the 1991 Gulf War, the number of Filipinos working in the Middle East -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Israel -- tripled by the time the first missiles flew into Iraq last month.

But as war grew imminent, Tomas' department suspended the deployment of Filipinos to the region and made plans to evacuate those still there.

Economists 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.