Filipina Soul

Various topics are put in the spotlight at these three blogs this week:

* Indigenous People’s Issues Today concentrates on the concerns of indigenous groups around the world. Usual topics include culture, intelectual property rights, archaeology and more. This week, a featured group is the Ifugao, who live in northern Luzon.

Currently the Ifugao indigenous peoples are experiencing great change as more and more land is being turned into non-traditional crops: coffee, palm oil, etc. Tourism has greatly increased, espeically after the Banaue Rice Terraces were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. Despite these encroachments of modernization and globalization, the Ifugao indigenous peoples of the Philippines continue to maintain many aspects of their traditional lifeways.

* Froodee tackles the relationship between the Philippine government and overseas Filipino workers (OFW). Author Jay contends that these hardworking Filipinos have become the ‘milking cows’ of the government that should be working to protect them.

Out of the blue, the labor authorities in Manila, the Philippine Overseas Employment Authority (POEA) in particular, came out with a memorandum making it a lot more difficult and costly for foreign employers to hire Filipino workers.

POEA Memorandum Circular No. 4 requires foreign employers to post a $5,000 repatriation bond and a $3,000 performance bond to the Philippine government for each of the Filipino workers they intend to hire.

* PipitBlog has posted a two-part travel guide to the Philippines (What Foreigners Need to Know, Parts 1 and 2). The short guide covers geography, transportation, religion and languages.

Whilst many Filipinos are well versed in the English language, some can’t speak it properly but they sure can express themselves well through body language and a little bit of basic English. Rest assured that even the beggars and the street vendors can point you to the right direction or entertain any of your questions.

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