Manila (AsiaNews/Agencies) - The numbers of Filipinos who were deployed to work overseas rose to 270,356 in the first three months of 2005, an increase over the 269,271 deployed in the same period last year, the Labour Department said on Wednesday.
This amounted to about 2,846 Filipinos leaving the country to work abroad every day from January 1 to April 5, the department said in a report.
The increase came despite a ban on the deployment of Filipino workers to Iraq, stricter immigration policies in Japan, Malaysia and South Korea and labour "nationalisation" policies in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, the department noted.
The lure of higher-paying jobs overseas has seen almost eight million Filipinos go abroad with nearly a million finding work overseas every year.
The money sent home by these workers plays a crucial part in propping up the country's cash-starved economy. Total overseas remittances in 2004 hit a record US dollar 8.5 billion, up 11.3 per cent from 2003.