With the economic blow being experienced by Spain, the Spanish government has implemented a temporary freeze in hiring migrant workers in the country.
Luis Antonio Calvo, Ambassador of Spain, said that the country will not be accepting foreign workers in the mean time – which includes workers from the Philippines. This is because of the economic struggle currently being a big issue in Spain, with about 20% of its population now considered unemployed.
“We try to prioritize fellow Spaniards so that they could improve our standards of living,” Calvo remarked. “But in the future, we will still have the need to bring people from the outside. But right now, we are growing very slow.”
The Ambassador also added:
“We are not growing. We also have more deaths than new born. We will need, as we did in the past, people coming from abroad to work in Spain because the Spaniards do not have enough workers. Filipinos have good adaptability and know many things.”
Calvo likewise commented that while overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) employed as house helpers in Spain are among the best in the world, they are becoming too expensive to afford. This is the reason why fewer families in the country are still willing to hire them.
He also pointed out that there are about 45,000 documented OFWs working in Spain as of the moment.
Calvo said that, at the moment, Spain is still trying to recover from the economic crisis that hit the country in 2009.
Since 2009, however, the country has been hit by an economic crisis – and they’re still struggling to recover until now.
“We lost a lot of jobs,” Calvo admitted.
He, however, remains optimistic that they will soon hire foreign workers again in the future.
“If we continue growing at the rate of 3 percent year in and year out, we will probably have to import the work force,” said Calvo. When that time comes, Calvo said Filipino workers will be among their priorities for hiring.
via:businessmirror