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Saudi Arabia still top destination for OFWs
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Posted on Jul 08 2011
[B]By JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO[/B]
[I]OFW Journalism Consortium[/I]
[B]MANILA[/B]—Amid a slowdown in deployment to Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom remains the top destination for new-hire and rehired overseas Filipino workers.
Total migrant worker deployment (both newhires and re-hires) in 2010 for Saudi Arabia reached 293,049, only a 0.56 percent growth from 2009 deployment of 291,419.
Saudi Arabia is still way ahead of other destination countries for migrant workers in 2010: United Arab Emirates (201,214), Hong Kong (101,340), Qatar (87,813), Singapore (70,251), Kuwait (53,010), Taiwan (36,866), Italy (25,595), Bahrain (15,434), and Canada (13,885).
A fresh pronouncement that the Kingdom will not issue working visas anymore to Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers starting July 2 will impact on deployment figures for 2011, migration analysts said.
The slowdown of deployment to Saudi Arabia was because of the negative growth rate for new-hires. The 119,379 new-hire OFWs deployed to Saudi in 2010 was 5.75 percent less than the 2009 figure of 126,661.
Among the top ten destination countries for new-hire countries, second-ranked UAE (-8.95 percent), third-ranked Qatar (-8.61), and eighth-ranked Bahrain (-11.34) experienced growth declines.
For rehires, the 2010 deployment figure of 173,670 for Saudi Arabia is 5.41 percent higher than the 2009 figure of 164,758.
Third-ranked Hong Kong Special Administrative Reion (-1.32 percent) and eighth-ranked Canada (-14.2) were the countries in the top ten for deploying new hires that experienced growth rate declines.
New-hire and rehired land-based workers deployed in 2010 (1,123,676) was only 2.89 percent higher than the 2009 figure (1,092,162).
There was a negative growth rate in the deployment of newhires, by 2.22 percent (given the 2010 deployment of 341,966 versus the 349,715 in 2009).
On the reverse, given the 781,710 rehires deployed in 2010 and the 742,447 rehires deployed in 2009, there was a 5.29 percent growth for rehires.
Growth rates are computed by subtracting the difference between the current and previous years’ totals and by dividing that difference with the total of the previous year.
