I met a lady in her 50’s who sat next to me in the plane whilst on my way to Cebu, Philippines a few years back. She restored my sanity while few kilometres above the ground (I was honestly crowded with anxiety then). She was a very intelligent woman, I should say, who shared her thoughts concerning her disappointments about the exodus of many Filipino intellectuals, leaving the Philippines scarce of proficient, skilled, and capable professionals. I forgot to ask her name, so I’ll just call her Ms Clever.
At present, there are more than 10 percent of the Filipino population working in different parts of the world. Every year more and more are leaving the country, looking for the greener pasture in different lands. Sadly, few hundreds are exploited and abused. What is very depressing is that many of these skilled professionals are doing non-skilled works just to get a far better pay than the more venerable works they left aside in the country. The greatest number of the OFW population found their niche in the different country states of the Americas. A good number found their second home in the countries of Europe particularly in the UK. This throng are mostly of health related profession such as nurses, doctors, medical technologists, pharmacists, and etc; IT experts; and even teachers. The irony, some of our specialist doctors, consultants, and medical experts, study nursing just to get qualifications and possibly work in hospitals and nursing homes in New York, Chicago, Florida, London, Manchester wherever possible and even risking life and soul to the impossible ones like Iraq, Libya, Bahrain, and Afghanistan.
