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Saturday, April 27, 2013

OFW Dies in Jeddah Consulate

An Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) who has been seeking assistance for repatriation from the Philippine government since 2011 after he was diagnosed with ulcer died Wednesday last week inside the consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) spokesperson Raul Hernandez said repatriation is now being arranged for the Filipino who was identified by migrant rights watchdog Migrante as Danilo Grefadilyo of Sorsogon. Hernandez said the OFW was last seen resting alone in one of the benches of the consulate on April 3, long before undocumented Filipinos began camping out near the consulate.
Grefadilyo, who appeared sick and weak, told consulate officials that he has not eaten for several days due to digestion problems and that “the food he eats was being rejected by his stomach, said Hernandez. (Roy C. Mabasa)

source: TEMPO

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Baldoz warns OFWs against fake receipts

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz warned the public on Wednesday against groups or individuals issuing fake receipts in places frequented by overseas Filipino workers such as the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

The fake receipts were issued by some employees of manning agencies who reported the case to the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, OWWA said.

Baldoz also instructed OWWA chief Carmelita Dimzon to publish notices and issue advisory to recruitment and manning agencies to put internal control mechanisms to prevent the illegal practice.

“The public should be well-advised on the matter for the safety of  overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Benefits may be compromised if the OFWs’ names are not registered as OWWA members. OWWA members are assured of the social and protection programs and services offered by the Agency,” Baldoz said.

For her part, Dimzon said OWWA is now coordinating with the National Bureau of Investigation to help investigate all possible sources of fake documents and bring to court those responsible.

source:  Philstar

Friday, April 19, 2013

OFWs are ambassadors of the Philippines

Overseas Filipino Workers in Arab countries especially in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) must respect immigration and labor laws of their host countries, Vice President Jejomar Binay said Tuesday.

“Remember that you are our ambassadors as well, so your actions also reflect on our country,” Binay reminded OFWs as he repeated his call on Philippine Embassy officials in Saudi Arabia to speed up the processing of papers of undocumented workers who needed to be sent back home and to runaways who needed shelter and legal assistance.

Reports say there are about 80 OFWs camping outside of the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah.

Binay, who is also the Presidential Adviser on OFW concerns, made the appeal as the KSA government implements the April 6 three-month reprieve issued by King Abdullah for foreign workers who have problems with their papers.

The reprieve delays the arrests of foreign workers as well as gives them the opportunity to correct their documents.

Working under employers who are not original sponsors is a violation of immigration laws in the Kingdom.

“For workers affected by the Saudization policy, they need to be able to legally transfer from their original sponsors to their current employers. Workers who have long run away from their original sponsors and no longer have valid residency permits or passports meanwhile are in a different category altogether. Theirs is an immigration problem and no longer a labor one,” the Vice President said.

Saudi Arabia, one of the favorite destinations of Filipino workers, is now observing Nizaqat: a government drive to provide more jobs to Saudi nationals.

There is no amnesty for foreigners illegally staying in Saudi Arabia.

source:  Lyndon Plantilla/PIA Central Newsdesk

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Illegal Filipinos Numbers Up In Oman

Muscat: There has been a 100-per cent increase in the number of Filipino migrant workers who don't have any valid residency or work permits in Oman, according to a newly released data.

The data, known as the 'Stock Estimate of Filipinos Overseas', presented by the Commission on Overseas Filipinos (CFO), showed that in 2011, there were some 6,400 undocumented Filipino workers in the Sultanate, whereas in 2010, the number was 3,000.


According to the Ministry of Manpower (MoM), some 12,000 expatriate workers are absconding in Oman, mainly in the fishing areas in the governorate of Al Wusta. "This is a pressing problem across all the governorates in the country. I request government departments, private-sector enterprises, and citizens to cooperate with the MoM to resolve this problem," a senior official of the MoM said.

Expressing shock over the rising figures, Chairperson of Filipino Community Social Club Janete Daang said it is very surprising that the number is so high even though the Philippines Embassy is doing a lot to reduce the number of undocumented Filipinos. "A large number of them enter illegally from other countries, which makes matters worse for us," she told Times of Oman.

Recently, the Philippines Embassy in Muscat closed an employment loophole, which enabled undocumented Filipino nationals to enter the Sultanate without the formal permission of the mission after fleeing from their sponsors in neighbouring countries.


Ernesto C. Bihis, Labour Attaché of the Philippines Embassy in Muscat, noted that all Filipino nationals working in Oman traditionally required a "no objection certificate" to be issued by their embassy in Muscat as part of the visa-application procedure.

"This is mandatory if they are hired from the Philippines," he remarked.
Earlier, migrants entering the country across the border had not been subjected to such procedures, creating a situation where the embassy was not able to properly vouch for them or for the employer.

"We know the embassy officials have managed to change the rule after continuous dialogue with Omani authorities since undocumented workers are more likely to end up with onerous contracts and to encounter immigration or labour cases," Janete Daang added.
Non-payment of salaries.

The most common reasons for their decision to run away from their employers in neighbouring countries are the non-payment of salaries and sometimes physical abuse by their employers. "From just 1,500 in the year 2000, the number of Filipinos without valid residence or work permits is steadily growing in Oman," noted the CFO report.


The Stock Estimate of Filipinos Overseas also showed that in 2011, there were only 140 permanent migrants (immigrants, dual citizens, or legal permanent residents) in the Sultanate, whose stay did not depend on work contracts.

The number of temporary migrants, including Filipinos who are employed overseas but are expected to return, stood at 43,318 in 2011. Students, trainees, entrepreneurs, and businessmen are also considered to be part of this category. 

In 2011, there were 10.46 million overseas Filipinos — five per cent of international migrants worldwide — spread across 217 countries.

To avoid being tricked, the Department of Foreign Affairs has advised all job hunters to check the official list of labour-market opportunities on the Consulate General's website.


The CFO was established in 1980 to promote the interests of Filipino immigrants and permanent residents in other countries and to preserve and strengthen overseas Filipino communities all over the world .

The data covered 214 countries in 2009, 217 in 2010, and 227 in 2011, wherein the CFO noted there were 10.46 million overseas Filipinos, up from 8.6 million in 2009 and 9.5 million in 2010.

Part of the estimate was taken from the remittance records of overseas Filipinos and the departure/arrival documents filled out by immigrants at all airports and seaports in the Philippines.


source:  Times of Oman

Get Resume Help And Greatly Improve Your Odds

Do you want to create the amazing standout resume that will give you a better chance of achieving the job you want? Unless you have a lot of experience in Human Resources, it is very difficult to figure out what will count as an amazing standout resume.

However, there are some secrets of the trade that anyone who is determined to write well can pick up. The key to a good resume is that you are willing to look at your career with new eyes and describe it in such a way that others can follow the story of your success.

Most people are used to thinking about their resumes in terms of duties and responsibilities, but this is not really the way to create your amazing standout resume. If you think about it, you will understand the reason why intuitively. Every single person who ever held your past positions has had duties and responsibilities very similar to yours. These duties are simply not the things that make you special as a job candidate. You need to transcend this old fashioned idea about how a resume should look and go further. How do you do it?

The ultimate key to an amazing standout resume is going from ideas about duties to ideas about achievements. To understand exactly how this works, an example would probably be helpful. Let's say that your job is logistics. Logistics is, for many people, a boring area of industry -- but it is very necessary.

Let's say that, as part of your job in logistics, your target is to reduce the cost of sending packages by five cents. In other words, your principal duty is to achieve this target. If you do not manage to do so, you may lose your job.

Now, let's imagine that by looking at the different ways to send packages and figuring out a new way of deciding which packages should be sent "First Class," you manage to save ten cents on every package mailed instead of just five. This is an achievement: You literally doubled your target, and that means that over time, you saved twice as much as anticipated. Employers will be interested to know how you did it, and they will be more likely to believe that you are capable of doing the same for them. This makes you unique and special compared to others.

You should also notice something else about the amazing standout resume -- it has numbers. Numbers about cost savings and other issues can be understood by anyone, regardless of whether they know the responsibilities of a given job. An amazing standout resume is a powerful story of your achievements backed up by numbers. It is the numbers that serve as evidence and prove that you are not boasting. So, next time you need to write a resume, do yourself a favor. Think in terms of achievements and make sure that it is an amazing standout resume. That's the way to get the job that you really want!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

3 Reasons Why Only 5% of Resumes Are Above Average

Every day, about 300 different resumes come into my staffing firm. Unfortunately for many, it would be generous to say a mere 5% of incoming resumes are well-written, thus giving the applicant a significant chance at getting what the market considers to be a competitive job.

Here are 3 mistakes that the other 95% consistently make:

1. Abusing the adjective "Entrepreneurial"

The adjective "entrepreneurial" is just like "spiritual" as it has different meanings, some positive, some negative, some neutral to everyone.

However, both to myself and, from what I've experienced over the years, to a lot of small business employers, the word is a big negative.

Here's what many of the small business entrepreneurs whom I've worked with think:

If someone is so entrepreneurial, what's to say that they won't go start their own business in a few months, thus leaving my company and me nowhere. Also, if this person is as entrepreneurial as they claim, I am going to possibly be hiring a future competitor?

When it comes to corporate, using entrepreneurial is neither here nor there, but if you use the word have an example as to why you are one of the very few who can back it up. A sentence that starts like this seems more average than you would know:

"An entrepreneurial sales professional..."

2. Stop Tweaking Your Resume - It's Like Getting Plastic Surgery One Too Many Times

Market yourself how you want to market yourself and how you want other to see you. 99.99% of job seekers end up tweaking their resume to what they heard may be a good term during elevator chat or what their cousin claims got them their job.

With your resume, it is imperative that you feel comfortable with how you are represented and stick to that making tweaks infrequently. Changing too often is a psychological negative as there are too many drivers that have nothing to do with your resume that could be the reason as to why a particular employer did not get back to you.

Also, if you find yourself having to tweak your resume more than a few sentences max for every job you are applying to, you are applying to jobs that you are not qualified for.

Make a rule every time you change your resume:

Make the rule that if you change your resume because you heard that your friend got their job after they did x, you must wait two weeks prior to changing it again. This should make you think more and make unnecessary, unhelpful changes less.

3. Don't make your objective more than 3 lines.

The reason why many online publications have short paragraphs is because web readers get very scared and off-put by the thought of reading long paragraphs. You will never see a chunk of text at the top of any NYTimes.com article because the reader would have the WSJ.com bookmarked the next day.

If you must write a book prior to having the resume reader see your experience (and sometimes it's necessary), make it well written and form a new paragraph after every two sentences.

Also, always widen out your margins as the odds of the resume reader reading the 2nd page of your resume is very, very low. Though, don't prompt this to make your resume 1 page. Instead, the MS Word real-estate to your advantage.

In Summation:

After these three 3 are taken care of, I"ll gladly give more. However, by that time, hopefully you've followed these 3 enough to where you are employed by the "stretch job" that you thought would not even call you for a 1st interview.