The Philippines’ capital city faced a real problem when the residents have no jobs. Following more than two months since Rodrigo Duterte’s government brought in coronavirus restrictions, Aljazeera reports.
Thousands of unemployed workers who want to return to their home provinces or their jobs overseas are stranded in the capital.
As the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) clarified, the actual number of unemployed Filipinos is only a little over 69,000 from companies that have closed due to the novel virus epidemic.
Filipinos are unable to earn, many of them have been forced to live on the streets. Meanwhile, the government says it is doing the best it can – but public outrage is growing.
Commenting the job crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak, Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said that before the COVID, the Philippine employment situation was vibrant, “expanding at 4.0% or 1.6 million net employment generated”.
“When the global pandemic hit, we feared that employment will be impacted badly. We expected these results given that health crisis has crippled most of our economic activities,” the official added.
According to Philippine Red Cross chairperson and Senator Richard Gordon, more blood donors in the Philippines are needed to ensure that blood banks would not run out of supply in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To sum the situation up, the Philippines’ unemployment rate rose to 17.7% accounting to 7.3 million unemployed Filipinos in the labour force in April 2020, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.
For the Asian country, this is a record high in the unemployment rate reflecting the effects of Covid-19 economic shutdown to the in-country labour market.
