Lita San Pedro de la Cruz at Splash in the Centrepoint Mall in Abu Dhabi. She has worked for the company for 17 years.
Lita San Pedro de la Cruz at Splash in the Centrepoint Mall in Abu Dhabi. She has worked for the company for 17 years.

Philippines' top export: its people



People are the Philippines' biggest export, with 10 million of the country's population of 92 million living abroad. A lack of employment opportunities at home forces many Filipinos to seek work overseas but there is a price to pay when one or both migrant parents leave their children behind.

Grace Princesa, the new Philippine ambassador to the UAE, has expressed concern over the growing "feminisation" of migration and its social costs. About 50 per cent of Filipino migrant workers are women, most of whom leave their family behind, she said last month. "Studies show that children aged 12 and below need their parents, especially their mother," she said. "If the mother really needs to go out of the country to work, she should be fully documented, fully protected and the price should be right."

The US$400 (Dh1,470) minimum wage for overseas household workers, which is set by the Philippines government, should be followed, Ms Princesa said. Her agenda includes plans to conduct financial literacy courses for Filipinos in the Emirates early next year; support attempts by her government to make the transition back to Filipino life easier for returning expatriates; improve women's employment prospects at home; and help reduce the need to leave in the first place.

Records from the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs showed that as of June 2008 there were about 325,000 Filipinos in the Emirates, but the Philippines' Commission on Overseas Filipinos said there could be an additional 204,000 who live and work here now. Sixty per cent of them are skilled or professional workers, 25 per cent are in the service sector and 15 per cent are household workers. After Saudi Arabia, the UAE is the most popular destination for Filipino workers. Overseas workers worldwide remitted $1.4 billion to the Philippines in September, up 8.6 per cent from a year ago.

Filipinos in the UAE sent home $471 million, or 3.7 per cent, of the $12.8bn in total remittances registered worldwide for the first nine months of the year. They send an average of Dh700 a month, according to UAE Exchange, the country's leading handler of remittances. rruiz@thenational.ae

A resident of the UAE since 1994, Lita San Pedro de la Cruz, 49, said the money she sent home while working in Manama and Abu Dhabi for more than two decades has helped improve her family's quality of life in the Philippines. Mrs de la Cruz said her remittances were used to educate her four children and to renovate the house she inherited from her mother. Three of her four children have graduated from college and have landed overseas jobs; her youngest will graduate in October 2010. "I really don't know how I was able to manage to send them to private schools and later to college," she said. "I did not rely on my husband for their needs." Her eldest son, Fernando, 30, is an accounting graduate who worked at UAE Exchange in 2000 before moving to Holland where he now lives with his wife and their infant daughter. Jennifer, 29, works as a supervisor at Axiom Telecoms in Abu Dhabi and was married this year. Her other daughter, Joanne, 25, recently got a job at Al Ansari Exchange after arriving in Abu Dhabi on December 2. Both are marketing graduates. Her youngest son, Ahmed, 20, is a marketing student in Manila. Mrs de la Cruz left the Philippines in 1985 to work as a cashier at a bakery in Bahrain and moved to Abu Dhabi in 1994. "After being away from my children for a long time, the only way for me to be with them was to provide them the best education so they could join me here later," she said. Before leaving the Philippines, she and the family rented a one-bedroom apartment in Manila. When she and her husband separated, the children moved into their grandmother's home in Angat, Bulacan, about 35km north of Manila. "I have simple dreams both as a mother and an overseas Filipino worker," she said. "All I want is for my children to have a good education and see all of them graduate from college." Mrs de la Cruz married when she was 18 and did not finish high school. "I did not want them to follow in my footsteps, so I worked hard overseas to send them all to school," she said. She started out as a sales assistant at Splash, a GCC fashion retailer with headquarters in Dubai. "But Dh800 (US$215) was not enough to pay for the education of my children who all attended a private school," she said. "Although we're paid for overtime work, I still had to take a salary advance from my company and the money was used to pay for school fees for the entire year." She worked at different outlets in Sharjah and Dubai, and requested a transfer to Abu Dhabi in 2000 when her eldest son arrived in the capital to work for UAE Exchange. Of the Dh1,000 she earned each month in 1994, Mrs de la Cruz sent Dh800 each month to her children. As a migrant worker, she was also in a position to help her sister and cousins. "I was indeed blessed with a good job and an employer who valued my hard work," she said. Mrs de la Cruz still works at Splash after being with in the company for 17 years and now earns Dh6,500 a month. "My children have always been my top priority."

Test

Director: S Sashikanth

Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan

Star rating: 2/5

Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Other workplace saving schemes
  • The UAE government announced a retirement savings plan for private and free zone sector employees in 2023.
  • Dubai’s savings retirement scheme for foreign employees working in the emirate’s government and public sector came into effect in 2022.
  • National Bonds unveiled a Golden Pension Scheme in 2022 to help private-sector foreign employees with their financial planning.
  • In April 2021, Hayah Insurance unveiled a workplace savings plan to help UAE employees save for their retirement.
  • Lunate, an Abu Dhabi-based investment manager, has launched a fund that will allow UAE private companies to offer employees investment returns on end-of-service benefits.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
 
Started: 2021
 
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
 
Based: Tunisia 
 
Sector: Water technology 
 
Number of staff: 22 
 
Investment raised: $4 million 
The BIO:

He became the first Emirati to climb Mount Everest in 2011, from the south section in Nepal

He ascended Mount Everest the next year from the more treacherous north Tibetan side

By 2015, he had completed the Explorers Grand Slam

Last year, he conquered K2, the world’s second-highest mountain located on the Pakistan-Chinese border

He carries dried camel meat, dried dates and a wheat mixture for the final summit push

His new goal is to climb 14 peaks that are more than 8,000 metres above sea level

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Ferrari
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Michael%20Mann%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Adam%20Driver%2C%20Penelope%20Cruz%2C%20Shailene%20Woodley%2C%20Patrick%20Dempsey%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The smuggler

Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple. 
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.

Khouli conviction

Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.

For sale

A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.

- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico

- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000

- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950

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Analysis

Members of Syria's Alawite minority community face threat in their heartland after one of the deadliest days in country’s recent history. Read more

Emergency

Director: Kangana Ranaut

Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry 

Rating: 2/5

NO OTHER LAND

Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal

Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham

Rating: 3.5/5

COMPANY%20PROFILE
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North Pole stats

Distance covered: 160km

Temperature: -40°C

Weight of equipment: 45kg

Altitude (metres above sea level): 0

Terrain: Ice rock

South Pole stats

Distance covered: 130km

Temperature: -50°C

Weight of equipment: 50kg

Altitude (metres above sea level): 3,300

Terrain: Flat ice
 

Pearls on a Branch: Oral Tales
​​​​​​​Najlaa Khoury, Archipelago Books

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