Malaysia has assured the Philippine government that Filipinos will continue to be employed in plantations in Sabah amid the ongoing operation by Malaysian forces to flush out followers of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III who entered the resource-rich territory last month to press a historical claim, reports GMA News. Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said there are 451 Filipinos with 350 dependents working in the plantations.
MUSCAT--Wow Pinoy, the first Filipino store in Oman was opened for business with a lot of fanfare and excitement at Athaiba, next to Safeer Hypermarket, here onMarch 8, reports the Oman Tribune. MacArthur Corsino, Consul-General at the Philippines Embassy, inaugurated the store. Jeanie Hammad, operations manager, and Liza Alviar, marketing manager, were the two enterprising Filipinas who came up with the idea to open a store with exclusively Filipino products.
The Filipino-led Dubai Vocal Ensemble (DVE) won the recently concluded 1st Annual Choir of the Year competition in February hosted by United Arab Emirates' The Score, reports Goodnewspilipinas.com. The DVE beat seven other choirs from the whole of UAE, which included Blue Fever from Abu Dhabi, Nassim Al Saba Choir of the American University of Sharjah. The competition was judged by the Grammy Award Winning a cappella group The Swingle Singers at the Dubai College.
MANILA--There are fewer Filipina chief executive officers (CEOs) this year than in 2012, according to a study by the Grant Thorton International Business Report (IBR), reports Philstar.com. According to the report, 37 percent of senior posts in the Philippines are held by women, down by two percentage points from 2012. “Despite the drop, the Philippines has the largest proportion of female top executives among the participating ASEAN countries, and remains significantly above the global average,” the report said. The global average is 24 percent in 2013, up by three percentage points from last year.
MANILA--At least a hundred Filipino domestic helpers are being hired in Hong Kong every day despite the moratorium on the deployment of household service workers (HSWs) by a group of local recruitment agencies, reports Philstar.com. Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) still processes around a hundred employment contracts of newly hired and rehired workers every day. Many Filipino HSWs opt to renew their employment rather than return home after finishing their contracts. The Society of Hong Kong Accredited Recruiters of the Philippines declared a moratorium on the deployment of HSWs to protest the government’s no placement fee policy.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has decided to reinstate the hundreds of thousands of overseas Filipinos whose registration as voters it earlier deactivated, but not all of them will be allocated ballots when voting period runs from April 13 to May 13, reports Rappler.com. Comelec Resolution 9653--the same resolution that restored 238,557 overseas absentee voters (OAV) to the voters' list--resolved that only 20 percent of these voters will be allocated ballots. Only some 47,000 ballots will be printed for the 238,557 reinstated overseas voters because not all of these reinstated overseas voters to actually vote this year. Their registration was deactivated after they failed to vote in the 2007 and 2010 elections--grounds provided in the election code-- prompting Filipino groups based abroad to lobby the Comelec to reconsider.
A 39-year-old Filipino nurse claims he accidentally killed his countryman with a potato peeler when they quarrelled over a woman, reports Gulf News. The nurse, O.J. was said to have invited his compatriot friends, including the victim L.N., over for dinner. An Emirati police lieutenant said the defendant admitted that he fought with L.N. and stabbed him after the victim mocked O.J. and sarcastically criticised his girlfriend. Alcohol consumption was reportedly involved.
LOS ANGELES—Three Filipino men were convicted here yesterday (Tuesday in Manila) of illegally importing a grenade launcher, mortar launcher, rocket-propelled grenade and other military-grade weapons to the United States, reports Inquirer.net. Sergio Syjuco, 26, Cesar Ubaldo, 27, and Arjyl Revereza, 26, were arrested January last year after they were caught selling the weapons to an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent in a sting operation conducted in the Philippines. According to the evidence presented at trial, the defendants conspired to sell the weapons to the undercover FBI agent posing as a buyer who planned to arm drug dealers in Mexican drug cartels and Mexican Mafia gang members.
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