The real victims

Egay Uy . 

AS aptly said by Mayor Oscar S. Moreno in one of the meetings of the department heads of the city government, it is not him but the city of Cagayan de Oro and the Kagay-anons who are the real victims of the campaign that appears to be trained specifically on his person to smear his name as the local chief executive.

He said investors who may have their eye on Cagayan de Oro might hesitate to make decisions, or postpone making them, to pour investments in the city because of the negative publicity being regularly fed to the public via various media.

A similar campaign worked during the national polls in 2016.  It somehow portrayed national officials as the bad guys of the republic.  Local observers however say that the good points of the mayor clearly outweigh the negative publicity sowed by his opponents.

True enough, the comments relative to the negative propaganda that are regularly posted on Facebook by detractors are in favor of Mayor Moreno more than they do the other candidates.

Unlike that of the national scene, local observers and voters know the real score.

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Whoever finds the statement of the palace spokesperson plausible that the country lacks skilled workers may have detached his ear from the ground.  The statement that the country lacks Filipino workers which is why Chinese workers were “imported” at wages about six times more than what their Filipino counterparts are paid is disturbing.

We have thousands of overseas workers because there is an oversupply of skilled Filipinos.  Estimates in 2017 indicate that there were 2.3 million OFWs from April to September alone.  Of these, 1 million were males while 1.25 were females.

Of the total, only 8.7 percent were managers and professionals and the rest were in the group that we may consider skilled workers, e.g., technicians, clerical support, service and sales, skilled agricultural, craft and related trades, plant and machine operators and elementary occupations.  Eighty percent compose the workers in service and sales, craft and related trades, plant and machine operation, and elementary occupations.

As reported by PhilStar last May 2018, a Social Weather Station survey revealed that the number of unemployed Filipinos in the first quarter of that year soared to 10.9 million.  So why has the country “imported” Chinese workers in jobs that can readily be done by Filipinos?

(Egay Uy is a lawyer. He chairs the City’s Regulatory and Complaint Board, co-chairs with the city mayor the City Price Coordinating Council, and chairs the city’s Joint Inspection Team.  He retired as a vice president of Cepalco.)