Integration
FOREIGN Affairs Assistant Secretary Luis Cruz said in a forum in Quezon City the migration pact should be seen in a broader context of the Asean vision of economic integration.
Cruz said the pact was hatched along the line of consolidating the regions trade strengths as East Asian economies of neighboring Japan, China, and Korea continue to spiral upward.
This declaration is part of a desire for the freer movement of goods, capital and labor, Cruz explained.
It is the wave of the future, he added.
The Asean region hopes to build an Asean community by 2015 so that it is at par with other regions such as the EU and the Northern American Free Trade Alliance (Nafta), said the director general for Asean affairs at the DFA.
Cruz explained that along this principle, the Asean has made agreements to mutually recognize engineers and nurses both skilled occupations coming from member-countries.
This mutual recognition of skills agreement means Southeast Asian engineers and nurses can just go to any Asean country to work, and their countries academic and professional qualifications will be respected in Asean countries.
Part of this integration, according to Cruz, is labor migration. The Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia have been deploying its workforce as migrant workers.
Vietnam has a 27-year-old overseas employment program and its 350,000 workers are in some 40 destination countries, Vu Quoc Huy of Hanois National Economics University said during the PIDS-sponsored forum.
Citing 2001 to 2003 data from Indonesias Department of Manpower and Transmigration, Carunia Mulya Firdusay of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences said some 998,228 migrant workers are in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, among others.
Ambassador Rosario Manalo of the Department of Foreign Affairs said that she can only wish for a regional treaty or convention on migrant workers that will include low-skilled workers.
However, Manalo didnt call for a review and possible amendment to the two-month old pact. OFW Journalism Consortium
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