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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Tuesday, January 31, 2017
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A COUSIN of mine works for an agency that sends domestic helpers to Hong Kong. I wish I could recommend applicants, but I detest the “second class” treatment our college-educated Filipino women go through in order to make both ends meet.
The minimum wage for stay-in domestic workers in Hong Kong averages HK$4,200 per month or nearly P27,000. A Hong Kong dollar at current exchange rate is P6.42.
The last time we – Panay News founder Danny Fajardo, the late Teddy Sumaray and this writer – went to Hong Kong, we checked in at Wharney Hotel in Wanchai commercial district but decided to eat lunch outside.
While looking for a restaurant, we bumped into two sexy women standing by the door of Makati Bar & Restaurant on Lockhart Road. We greeted them in Filipino, thus starting an animated get-to-know-you conversation.
But we excused ourselves due to prohibitive food prices thereat. To appease them, we asked, “If we ask you to see us at our hotel tonight, would you agree?”
“Yes, yes,” the two enthused, thinking we were serious. Thereafter they pointed to us the way to a restaurant serving Filipino food, the Philippine Islands Restaurant on Jaffe Road.
We could recognize the waitresses as Filipinos in their 30s. They ushered us to a table and asked their lady manager to join us while we were waiting for what we had ordered – chopsuey and beef broccoli.
The manager, Tara Polo, told us that the eight-month-old restaurant was actually owned by a Chinese philanthropist. Business was no good yet but they expected it to do better with more and more Filipino customers coming regularly.
Anna, a married waitress who brought our ordered food, joined our table for chit-chat. She said she was receiving a monthly salary of HK $8,000 – around P50,000 in Philippine currency. With that amount plus the salary of her husband who was also working in Hong Kong, there was enough for the children back home.
We spotted two ladies conversing in Filipino while dining at another table. From what we deduced, they were undocumented sex workers with a common dream: to extricate themselves from the quagmire of poverty.
We eventually found a reason to join their conversation. They confided to us that they were there because it was harder to make sufficient money in the Philippines.
They cited the case of a Mang Ambo who had come to Hong Kong as a mere hotel room boy. By saving most of his earnings and tips, he had invested in a small restaurant specializing in pork and chicken barbecue.
We found for ourselves the location of Restoran ni Mang Ambo a stone’s throw away. It was so small it could only accommodate 20 seated customers at a time. We sidled up to a Pinay cook grilling sticks of pork barbecue on charcoal.
“Somebody ordered 250 sticks to be picked up in an hour,” the woman told us.
While searching for more Filipinos the following day, we noticed a man and a woman manning two small money-transfer outlets doing business side by side: the Western Union and Moneygram. The Western Union man identified himself as Roy Nagar of Lucena City; the Moneygram lady, Joy Perez of Cebu City.
They had been hired there, they said, because they were Filipinos, and most of their patrons were Filipinos, too.
We asked Roy how he was related to the Nagars who used to sell piano arrangements at a shop on Escolta, Manila.
“We were the ones,” he lamented. “But selling arrangements is no longer profitable.”/PN
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