‘Saudi Arabia needs more Filipino workers’

Filipina maids carry shopping bags as they walk out of a mall in Riyadh on June 12, 2013. Fayez Nureldine / AFP Photo

RIYADH // Saudi Arabia will need even more Filipino workers despite its “Saudisation” policy, Manila’s labour secretary said on Wednesday after a meeting between Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte and Saudi King Salman.

To show Filipinos that they are still welcome, the Saudis are even willing to allow more than 100 “runaway” Filipino workers to return home, secretary Silvestre Bello told reporters in Riyadh.

Saudi officials told him they still need Filipinos who work in the Gulf kingdom in fields ranging from construction, domestic work, health care, retail, engineering, telecommunications, transportation and the oil industry, he said.

“They explained the kind of growth they are having in Saudi Arabia. They would need more workers in the coming years,” Mr Bello said.

“It came from their side that Filipino workers are good workers. They recognise that they were instrumental in the growth of Saudi Arabia in the past years,” he said.

“The most preferred overseas worker is the Filipino,” he quoted Saudi officials as saying.

Under an economic reform plan released last year in the face of collapsed oil revenues, Saudi Arabia wants unemployment among its citizens to fall to nine per cent by 2020, against 11.6 per cent last year.

Latest official figures showed almost nine million foreigners employed in the kingdom but that was before the worst of the economic pain struck, sending many expats homes.

Thousands of Filipinos and other Asian labourers, particularly in the construction sector, have left Saudi Arabia, some with wages still unpaid.

Saudi Arabia is the second-largest employer of Philippine overseas workers with 760,000 Filipinos in the kingdom, Manila has said.

It was widely expected that demand for such workers would fall due to the Saudisation policy and falling global oil prices since 2014.

Mr Bello said he raised the issue of about 160 Filipino “runaways” who have fled their employers, adding that he asked the Saudi labour minister to let Mr Duterte’s delegation take them home.

“To my surprise, he positively responded to my request,” Mr Bello said, adding that they would finalise an agreement on this later.

Mr Duterte, elected by a landslide last year, has often vocally expressed concern for the estimated 10 million Filipinos working overseas and receiving salaries they cannot get at home.

The money they remit back home has become a major pillar of the Philippine economy.

Philippine officials said that Mr Duterte and the Saudi officials also discussed closer cooperation in areas like investment, counter-terrorism, media, agriculture, tourism and logistics.

* Agence France-Presse