The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Two construction giants in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Oger Ltd. and Saudi Binladin Group (SBG), which employ a large number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are having problems affecting their workers that have been recurring even before the global oil-price downturn, according to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
Labor Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz revealed this to clarify reports of a massive, oil-related retrenchment of OFWs in Saudi Arabia.
“There is no massive, oil-related OFW retrenchment as of last week,” Baldoz said, citing a report from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration’s (POEA).
Baldoz said POEA Secretary Hans Leo J. Cacdac had met with concerned recruitment agencies, and will do so again in the next few days, to keep an updated score of the real situation in Saudi Arabia.
She added that Labor Attachés Rustico de la Fuente and Jainal Rasul Jr. reported that Saudi companies “are not” extensively dismissing OFWs from their jobs.
Baldoz said Saudi Oger Ltd. has repatriation cases involving 43 OFWs, but none of them has come home. Based on POEA records, the total deployment to Saudi Oger was only 4,837 between 2014 and 2015. Of this number, 96 percent were deployed in 2014. The deployment in 2015 was fewer, reaching only 176 OFWs.
In the case of SBG, the labor chief said the company was involved in a crane accident in Mecca last November that injured and even killed pilgrims, hence, it has been “penalized” by the Saudi government by not being awarded new contracts.
Cacdac reported that Lito Hernandez of IPAMS, Saudi Aramco’s local recruitment agency, had informed him that Saudi Aramco has schedules of final interviews from March to June for jobs in different Saudi Aramco departments; and that the oil giant’s plan for its Jizan refinery in the west of the coutry is pushing through.
“Hernandez has confirmed our report to the media last week that, while direct hiring by Aramco has not been affected by the oil-price decline, the hiring by Saudi Aramco contractors has slowed down,” Cacdac said.
IPAMS, which also recruits and deploys OFWs for Middle Eastern airlines, had also informed Cacdac that Saudia Airlines will hire 300 flight attendants this year, while Gulf Airlines is already finalizing arrangements for the hiring of additional OFWs this year.
Another POEA-licensed agency owner, Lito Soriano, of LBS e-Recruitment Corp., informed Baldoz that one of its clients, Prince Sultan Military Medical City in Riyadh, will hire 500 nurses. He added he had 1,000 more job orders for nurses in various government hospitals in the kingdom.
This number of job orders for professional and other highly-skilled workers is part of the 4,205 job orders available in various Saudi government-run medical facilities, such as the Prince Sultan Military Medical City, the Armed Forces Hospital, the Security Forces Hospital, the National Blood Center, and the King Faisal Memorial Medical Center, according to Soriano.
Omanfil, another licensed overseas recruitment agency owned by Leo de Ocampo, a former member of the POEA Governing Board, has opportunities for 1,000 construction workers for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council member-states.