MANILA – The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said Chinese nationals who have working permits in the country are just working on jobs that the Filipinos cannot or would not do.
DOLE secretary Silvestre Bello III said in an interview that the Chinese nationals who were entering the country are just filling vacancies and are not taking over jobs from the Filipinos.
“‘Yun lang naman kasing mga may alien employment permit, kaya sila binigyan ng permit, dahil ‘yung trabahong gagawin nila dito ay ‘di kaya ng mga Pilipino. O kaya, kahit kaya, ayaw,” Bello said in an interview with DZBB.
He also reiterated that that Alien Employment Permits will only be issued to foreigners if Filipino citizens cannot perform the job in question.
Bello’s statement came after President Rodrigo Duterte said in a speech recently that he cannot simply deport the Chinese nationals working in the Philippines because he is afraid that the Filipinos working in China might got laid off.
“President Duterte was simply saying that legal foreign workers in the country must not be troubled, considering that many Filipinos also go abroad to make a living,” said Bello in clarification to Duterte’s statement.
Duterte’s latest pronouncement was different from his earlier stand on the issue as he previously said that illegal workers in the Philippines should be deported but the issue should be approached “carefully.”
The Senate recently launched a probe into the rise of Chinese workers in the Philippines to check whether the foreigners are taking over jobs that could have been for Filipinos.
Last year, the Bureau of Immigration Intelligence Division arrested a total of 553 foreign nationals, mostly illegal workers. Recently, more than 200 foreign nationals were arrested in a raid of a network technology company in Makati City./PN
