Why are we 'a nation of servants'?
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e-souled
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Domestic helper,
F. Sionil Jose,
Filipinos,
nation,
OFW,
Philippines,
POEA,
Tsip Tsao
F. Sionil Jose gives a better and correct perspective of that Chip Tsao incident in his column in Philippine Star :“Here we go again, some inconsequential columnist in Hong Kong takes a cheap shot at our unhappy country, calls us “a nation of servants” and immediately an uproar, and magma feelings of hurt are unleashed. Editorials, columnists, politicians are outraged — they demand apology as if one would really salve the bone-deep insult. It was the same sometime back when an English publisher defined “Filipina” as a housemaid. Such insults hurt profoundly but the pain fades quickly and soon after all that enraged outburst, we settle down to the same complacency, we continue sending more of our women abroad to be raped by Arabs, demeaned by Malaysians and Chinese, heckled by the Brits. What has our sense of outrage brought us?
Go to Hong Kong, to Singapore. Visit the Star Ferry environs in Hong Kong or Lucky Plaza, and Singapore’s Orchard St. And there, on Sundays you will see them, hundreds of Filipino domestics, yak-yaking, socializing on the sidewalk, having a pleasant respite from their work.
To the visitors, tourists and the natives, they are a piteous sight, illustrating so clearly and so well how this country has sank. As a Filipino, having witnessed such, I am utterly shamed. I do not blame our poor women for their sorry condition, for I know only too well their plight is the only way by which they can help their families at home and survive.
It is such a boring cliché now, but back to the not-so-distant past: Filipinas was the second richest country in the region, next only to Japan; our universities attracted students from all over Asia, and we had the best professionals, the most modern stores and hospitals.
And what was Hong Kong then? There were slums crawling up those hills on Victoria island, and slums all over Kowloon. Singapore as an English naval base was like old Binondo, with its small squalid shops and equally small houses.
But look at Singapore and Hong Kong now, then look at our country and people.
Sure, you can find in Makati magnificent mansions, the biggest luxury cars, the tony restaurants, skyscrapers. But elsewhere the ugly sprawl of slums, the very poor who now eat only once a day. We must ask ourselves that question, why we became “the hewers of wood and drawers of water” of the world. What happened to us, a very talented and heroic people with a revolutionary tradition?
Once we have answered this question, then we should no longer wonder why there is a continuing diaspora of our brightest people, of our women. It is then the time for us to be truly enraged — not at that Hong Kong columnist — but at the creators of this dismal miasma we call Filipinas. Do not kill the messenger who comes to us to tell the horrid truth about us. Ingest his message, then turn all that outrage, that vehemence, to the Filipinos who turned this beautiful country into the garbage dump of the region: the oligarchs, the Spanish mestizos, the Chinese Filipinos and the treasonous Indios who sent their money abroad instead of investing it here in industries to create jobs for our people. Then it is time for us to rail and condemn the crooked politicians who are the allies of these wretched rich who permitted the relentless hemorrhage of this nation’s capital.
Revolutionary tradition? Ask those rebels why, after 40 years, these leeches are still feasting on our blood!"
F. Sionil Jose is undeniably one of the few sages left in our country. He saw the Philippines in its glory days (1960s) and back. He saw how our neighboring nations rose up one by one until we got left behind.
Even without Tsao’s article, foreigners have low regard on us Filipinos, whether you are an OFW or staying in the Philippines. With millions of Filipinos working abroad as servants, what other image can the world have of Filipinos? Hasn’t the Philippine government succeeded in creating the world-wide perception that we are indeed a nation of servants?
Tsao has just become a mirror of what is really going on about the Filipinos and the Filipino image in the world…That is an undeniable fact…
We need to accept the fact that we are the number one exporter of domestic helpers especially to the US, Middle East and Hong Kong? Some of our teachers and other professionals resigned from their jobs here to apply as domestic helpers in other countries. We cannot blame foreigners if they call our country a “nation of servants” because their servants are mostly Filipinos.
Many migrant groups, including the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), Kanlungan Center Foundation, and Migrante International, have bashed Tsao for spouting this "racial slur." According to GMANews.TV Nevertheless, the groups admit that the Philippines has indeed become a country of overseas domestics.
Both CMA and Kanlungan questioned why Filipinos are so keen on denying the fact that we do have large a number of Filipinos doing domestic work abroad.
“We react because we have too many domestic workers abroad? But we do," CMA executive director Ellene Sana told GMANews.TV in an e-mail.
Institutionalization of migration
The phenomenon of migration in the Philippines can be traced back to the 1970s when there was a surge in the number of Filipinos leaving for abroad.
Dante Ang, chairman of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, said this was because then Labor Secretary Blas Ople thought of deploying Filipino workers to the Middle East to take advantage of the oil-boom and at the same time, temporarily solve the growing unemployment rate in the country.
However, more than 30 years after migration was pegged to be a temporary stop-gap measure against unemployment, the deployment of Filipino workers still hasn’t slowed down.
In an article titled “Understanding International Labor Migration in the East," published in the May-June 2007 Newsletter of the Philippine Institute for Development, Maruja Asis, director for Research and Publications of the Scalabrini Migration Center, identified the factors why Filipino migration has continued for almost four decades.
One of the reasons for this, she said, is the “institutionalization of migration."
The Philippine government has always been very upfront with its desire to deploy more Filipinos overseas.
“Working abroad has become an accepted fate to most Filipinos," she said.
In fact, she said it is now unusual for a Filipino to not to aspire for a job abroad despite being faced with proof that overseas is not really a haven for the unemployed.
The POEA said that a total of 165,737 Filipinos left for work abroad in January 2009 as compared to 132,285 in January 2008 – indicating an increase of 25.3 percent.
It also said that the 2009 deployment target is one million – 16.6 percent of which has already been achieved. It added that about 5,346 Filipinos are being sent to work abroad daily.
But why that has happened to our nation despite the fact that “Filipinas was the second richest country in the region, next only to Japan; our universities attracted students from all over Asia, and we had the best professionals, the most modern stores and hospitals” and our country, our Land is blessed with the bounty of nature or rich in natural resources? WHY…?
F. Sionil Jose was right in saying;
"We have A REAL AND INSIDIOUS ENEMY that we must vanquish, and this enemy is worse than the intransigence of any foreign power. WE ARE OUR OWN ENEMY. And we must have the courage, the will, to change ourselves."
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
"There are no tyrants where there are no slaves"
source:
GMANews.TV
The Daily Tribune
Philippine Star
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