| EDITORIAL Philippines: More pain, no gain  PART 1: The sick man of Asia PART 2: Goodfellas, with Tagalog subtitles PART 3 : Poverty, corruption: The ties that bind  Gallery 1  Gallery 2 |
HONG KONG and MANILA - Palmolive Palma, Rejoice Rivera, Lux Laurel and six other soft-porn "Shampoo Beauties", topless or clad in skimpy underwear and transparent yellow raincoats, didn't break a sweat literally to stop traffic in Manila recently. Nobody knew exactly what they were up to. They could have been mocking the Metro Manila Development Authority, whose chairman Bayani Fernando - in the obvious absence of really serious problems in the megalopolis - decided to go after men who refuse to wear shirts in public. Or they could have been protesting a ban on soft-porn movies ordered by SM Holdings - the country's biggest shopping-mall operator, controlled by Chinese-Filipino taipan Henry Sy.
Who cares? Public scandal or not, at least Palmolive Palma and the rest of the girls, in the midst of the current Philippine economic crisis, have found a niche home market. They don't need to karaoke a Tagalog version of Peter, Paul and Mary's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and then slog in daily purgatory living the life of an OFW (overseas Filipino worker).
Filipino Central casting
There they are, concentric rings of Filipinas spread out in Hong Kong, on the tarmac, on the subway, on the way to the Star Ferry pier, spilling over from Statue Square through the vault of the HSBC building engulfing Armani and Bulgari luxury compounds, mobbing wily Cantonese operators promoting lucky draws of Nokia cellular phones with prepaid SIM (security identity module) cards - "as little as HK$0.15 a minute [2 US cents] to the Philippines". Everywhere there's the infectious atmosphere of a larger-than-life social club; women of all ages chatting non-stop, comparing notes, staring endlessly at photos of boys and girls in school uniforms, sharing their food, reading Tagalog-language papers or calling home on their discount Nokias. By all means, Filipino maid Sundays in Hong Kong's Central district remain one of Asia's social-anthropology highlights.
The maids configure the most conspicuous example of Ferdinand Marcos' 1970s drive to export Philippine labor as a policy to increase foreign currency and so repay the country's mounting international debt. Now there are at least 7.5 million legalized
OFWs spread throughout 186 countries, apart from at least 1.7 million illegals. The soundtrack of Southeast Asia - and most of the Middle East - is played by Filipinos. Officials and crews on cargo and cruise ships sailing across all oceans are invariably Filipino. Filipino doctors and nurses migrate to overseas hospitals by the thousands every year. At least 4,000 Filipinos risk their lives working in Iraq. (The Philippines banned its citizens from going to work in Iraq after truck driver Angelo de la Cruz was kidnapped by Islamic militants on July 7. However, 42% of all Filipinos believe they have a right to look for a job in a danger zone such as Iraq.)
More than 200 Filipinos recently used the "southern back door" of Mindanao to sail to Turkey and then cross the border to find jobs in Iraq. More than 2,000 OFWs have landed in jail. Two were beheaded in Saudi Arabia. One was hanged in Singapore. One, de la Cruz, escaped beheading in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands live under semi-slavery regimes and suffer daily abuses.
Forced by abysmal mass poverty at home and the never-ending economic crisis, the Hong Kong amahs leave their families behind and embark on three-year contracts that pay a fixed salary set by the Hong Kong government. They then send 70-85% of the total back to the Philippines every month.
The "privilege" of working in a wealthy, advanced and multi-racial society where they keep the house impeccably clean, cook tasty food, communicate well, teach English to the children of their wealthy employers for free, and learn Cantonese almost immediately, is rewarded in many cases with being treated as a very low-class citizen - not to mention a back-breaking, full six-day workweek and a single trip to see the family back home once every two years. The "social club" spread out in Hong Kong's Central district confirms that not a few among them have to sleep on kitchen floors or even on top of cupboards.
In Hong Kong's notorious, decades-old culture of labor exploitation, these women get paid less than half of what is offered by the lowest job in Hong Kong anyone would possibly contemplate taking. It's virtually impossible to gauge how such a warm, lovely people - bearing a strong Latin influence - can endure the worst of the Cantonese Inquisition - horrific abuse not too dissimilar to the case of Celestina Valdez Aquino, 44, who sued her former Hong Kong employer Betty So because she was repeatedly mistreated and then fired. Her crime: she had three deformed fingers.
So what do they get at the end of the calvary? They get education for their children, perhaps the possibility of opening a small business and improving their quality of living when they return home. This, of course, if they are not forced to come back sooner than they think - replaced by cheaper maids from mainland China.
The national heroes' plight
The peaceful weekly downtown Hong Kong sit-in, also referred to as the Sunday social club, is also a tremendously graphic political statement - an explosion of joy and autonomy after every recurrent six-day prison regime. Class struggle yes, but with a wicked smile.
How many are there in Hong Kong? The official numbers list at least 240,000 foreign maids - the absolute majority are Filipinas, with a smaller contingent of Indonesians, Thais and Nepalese. Unofficially, they number at least 400,000. The odds are always stacked against them. Racism is evident. Mean tai tais, or women of taste, don't like them - it's not hard to overhear the Chanel crowd in Hong Kong labeling Filipinas "public nuisances" or "impolite guests". In 2003, Hong Kong slashed the maids' minimum monthly wage of HK$3,670 (US$470) by HK$400 (US$51). This year, to help fund President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's presidential campaign, the government in Manila raised the processing fees for their employment contracts from HK$85 to HK$297.50 (US$37).
No wonder the Sunday social club, apart from the odd beauty contest - like the recent search for the "Summer Babe 2004", all contestants duly numbered, carrying a rose and sporting the same mauve dress - is also the ideal place for myriad Philippine organizations to rally against the terrible working conditions as well as the homeland policies that encourage the export of Filipino women.
Connie Bragas-Regalado, chairwoman of the Migrante Sectoral Party, is one of the fiercest voices defending the interests of OFWs. Migrante's position is that the Philippine government should at least give these women and girls adequate protection, since it can't already guarantee them jobs in their homeland.
Former president Cory Aquino used to call the Hong Kong amahs "national heroes". Not only that, they were also the unknown heroes of an Asian phenomenon - the economic boom in Hong Kong from the 1980s up until the 1997 Asian financial crisis. After all, because of the amahs the white-collar elite in Hong Kong didn't need to worry about taking care of their homes, so there was plenty of time to concentrate all their energies on making loads of money.
Now Arroyo's government wants to tax OFWs' income. Former Philippine labor secretary Nieves Confesor once said that "Filipino overseas labor should be viewed as an internationally shared human
resource, whose work benefits both the host country and the Philippines". The people from Migrante totally disagree: "That's very degrading. How can you share your migrant workers when they are treated as modern slaves in different countries? The expertise of the migrant worker should be used for the development of our own country and secondarily for the development of other countries - not to provide 'entertainment' and cheap labor for foreign countries." No wonder the crucial theme of Migrante's platform is the struggle for the creation of a sustainable internal market so millions of Filipinos are not forced to go into exile to find a job.
In Manila, Bragas-Regalado lays down the line: "GMA [Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo] is pushing OFWs to pay taxes, despite the absence of adequate government services and protection here and abroad. This administration is propagating a big lie by indirectly blaming us for the fiscal crisis and poor tax collection." And this is happening while "big-time tax evaders like [Chinese-Filipino tycoon] Lucio Tan go unscathed". Migrante stresses that the US$7.6 billion in remittances by OFWs in 2003 "is almost 100 times the figures of foreign direct investments".
Bragas-Regalado points out that "both the dollar remittances and government fees on OFWs help keep the economy afloat. How can this administration even think that OFWs are not helping the country? President Arroyo and her minions brought the country to this fiscal crisis. They are the culprits who should be made to account to the overseas Filipinos and the people in the homeland."
Nightlife economics
There are OFWs who are not as patient as the Hong Kong amahs and prefer to take a shortcut. Every day, when the bright lights start shining in Wanchai, one of Hong Kong's financial districts, an army of made-up, dressed-up young Asians - Chinese, Mongolians, Thais and most of all Filipinas - hits a string of bars like the immense Neptune II. At 4 or 5 in the morning, if they're lucky, they may be richer by US$100 or so - courtesy of business executives and expats. This certainly beats one week of toiling under the domestic Cantonese Inquisition.
These so-called public relations girls play the game with deftness. All it takes is to be "tabled" (served drinks by a customer), occasionally danced with, served as many drinks as possible, and then the girl can collect a percentage from the bar or club owner (who is not her employer). In one hour in a nightclub, a girl makes three or four times what she would make in one hour under the Cantonese Inquisition. And everything extra that happens outside the nightclub is the girl's own business. More than a few young Filipinas in Hong Kong end up following the bumpy road of working as a maid, then a waitress, and then PR girl, until they reach Valhalla: marriage with a Westerner.
There is no shortage of websites advertising Filipino ladies for Westerners; some even boast a top 10 on why they are the ultimate prize. (For the record: a Filipino lady is loving, romantic and caring; puts family first ahead of money; is deeply religious; believes in a one-man, one-woman relationship; is understanding, patient and supportive; has a flexible personality and is very optimistic; is well educated; dedicates profound respect to her partner or provider in the family; and adores a partner that makes her feel good about life.) Since the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are not doing much to alleviate the Philippine economic crisis, some Western lonely hearts are more than happy to volunteer for the job.
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