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Opinion

Joblessness in PH

JARRED by the crippling COVID-19 pandemic which still terrorizes millions of people across the globe, the economy continues to struggle, with hundreds of thousands of Filipinos now jobless.

Even manpower-importing nations in the oil-rich Middle East (ME) have been terminating the services of skilled and unskilled migrant workers, including our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

We agree with Sen. Grace Poe that the recent layoffs by the Philippine Air Lines will not only impact on the 2,300 employees who will be out of jobs but also on their families and other dependents.

Poe noted that with a robust and more broad-based state-led development strategy, the previously poorer Vietnam embarked on a steady climb to overtake the Philippines in terms of per capita income.

That’s why, she said, there’s a need to come up with urgent measures needed to stop the unemployment bleeding that deprives millions of our countrymen of sustainable income and decent food on the table.

Concerned state agencies ought to double their efforts to help workers displaced by the health crisis, which aggravated the joblessness and underemployment problems in Third World countries.

Unemployment in this Asian nation of more than 100 million people is usually attributed to overpopulation, oversupply of labor force on certain industries and the inability to take on available jobs.

Today, the suffering Filipino people, particularly the growing army of jobless men and women, need direct cash aid, skills training and retraining, livelihood assistance and emergency jobs creation.

And fortunately, the government, in the view of various quarters, is committed to improve the living conditions of the people even during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

Certainly, it’s a move in the right direction.