Life of an overseas worker

Being an overseas worker from Asian countries entails a lot of sacrifices, not only of being away from your family but also of all the problems that goes with it. Working abroad as we all knew is just temporary in nature and bound by employment contract that usually last for a year or two. Workers are also exposed to problem of termination, salary issue, working without proper documentation, maltreatment and violation of employment contract.

Almost every year services of some workers are being terminated because of several reasons and among these is what was mentioned above. They are forced to go back to their country of origin. And this is where their problem starts, when they finally arrived in their country. Workers who are still willing to work abroad, are still trying to response on the call of overseas jobs recruitment agencies regarding job openings abroad. This sometimes requires a small or big amount to go through it, and you are lucky if the expenses for processing & placement fee are being shouldered by foreign employers. But this is very rare to happen especially in the construction industry. This only happen in oil & gas, wherein the employers are oil companies, petrochemical companies and those who can afford to pay for all these things.

Workers who were not able to make some savings while working abroad, were forced to go after those lending institutions and individuals who are offering loans with certain interest. They were not able to save because their salary is small, because they came from Asian countries and their salary was way down than those of nationals from developed countries. Others have few or lots of dependents which they are trying to support out of their monthly income.

Some workers are constraint to look for a local job, but there are only few available positions where they can be accommodated. Few were able to find job in sales and marketing, where they are required to undergo training and were given allowance and commission only. Most of them were asked to sell, construction materials, credit cards, offer loans, cell phones, pre-need plans, insurances and everything that we could imagine.

They are forced to this because they want to support the needs of their loved ones. And this is the only available option for them where they could earn money, in the absence or while waiting for an overseas job. But others make use of their learned skills in technical and vocational training. And I have seen some of them doing it to earn a living.

I can consider them heroes after they have done all of these wonderful things. They work abroad because the salary in the local job is too small for them, to support their family and that the available jobs are too few. They have make use of all available means to survive with a common aim of supporting their dependents with whatever legal and honest jobs they can do and know of.

I think their government should find means of how to help these workers, who were able to help them increase the dollar reserves and help the government in some other way. They need this help particularly when they go back to their country of origin to retire and invest for a business using his hard earned money. Maybe the government should start doing something about this now where working abroad is becoming an option for most of the citizenry.