The math of toughing it out in HK

Some of the cheques used for the transaction.

By Vir B. Lumicao

Does it pay for a domestic worker to spend Php192,000 in placement, training and other fees to come to work in Hong Kong, get fired, and earn around Php700,000 over five years net of the charges?

Not so, according to a financial analysis The SUN has made based on the case of “X”, who arrived here in 2012, got axed after three months, found a second employer and was dismissed before she would begin work, then found a third one, who fired her after three years and six months.

Numerically, the worker’s net earnings look good, but they do not reflect lean days that certainly prevented her from remitting even just a bit of that income to her family.

X went to the Philippine Overseas Labor Office on Sept 5 to report a Makati-based recruitment agency that, she said, charged her a total of Php89,738 in placement fees, including a whopping Php60,000 for “visa etc”.

On top of that, X had to repay a Php102,278 owed from a finance company in Manila and a $10,500 placement fee she reportedly paid  a Hong Kong employment agency by installment.

Estimating the maid’s earnings over the five years from August 2012 until Aug 31 at a generous assumption of $4,000 per month, she would have grossed $168,000. Then taking an exchange rate of Php5 to a Hong Kong dollar, we converted the gross income to Php840,000.

Less all the fees and charges, X would have made Php311 a day, just 67% of what she would have earned in Manila based on a daily minimum wage of Php466 as of September 2013, or 64% of the current Php488 minimum wage in the National Capital Region.

List of expenses to get a
DH job in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong dollars, X’s daily earnings amounted to just $62.19 per day barely enough for two lunchbox meals. We have not factored expenses on her other daily needs into our assumptions otherwise little or nothing would be left for her food.

That shows how desperate the situation of X has been since she came to Hong Kong, as she would have been better off staying put in her job in her homeland, where she had an impressive employment history in the service industry.

That could very well be the situation also of many other OFWs who bite the bullet just to secure a job in Hong Kong, little realizing that all their earnings were practically going to greedy recruiters, instead of providing a more decent life for their families back home.

Labor Attache Jalilo de la Torre was sympathetic to the maid, but was disappointed to find out that the illegal charges were made more than three years ago, already way past the prescription period for filing claims against employment agencies that have overcharged job seekers.

Nevertheless, Labatt dela Torre decided to endorse X’s claim to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, hoping the industry watchdog could still bend some rules to accommodate her.