How do the Philippines compare with its ASEAN neighbors in labor policy and human resources?
The Philippines has more than a hundred and ten million people and (the) totality of ASEAN has more than 600 million people and counting. So we are about one-sixth of the total ASEAN population. We are quite wealthy in terms of people, amount of people. Of course second only to Indonesia. And we have a lot of labor policies and practices developed over the years and experience how to work out, implement these policies.
How do we work effectively with our ASEAN neighbors, with respect to hiring, recruitment, and wages?
Yes, we need to work together effectively with the rest. We have a hundred ten million people and there are about six hundred million, more than half a billion people in ASEAN. Indonesia is the biggest, and we need to work with them. We need to understand how they work and we need to know their labor policies and programs and how do they develop their people to be competent and to be employed. So employment is a process and we need to know how it’s done well with them, given the cultural and the social distinctions, or you might say, differences, but we have a lot of things in common with our ASEAN members.
What is the future of ASEAN labor and human resources?
We have to create our future. We have to create prosperity and wealth together. Imagine if this more than six hundred million people in ASEAN could work together as a closer. The richest countries, the United States, of course Europe, and now China, and India is coming up. And of course, they have billions of people. And if the ASEAN people can work together, then it would potentially create a prosperous and wealthy region, and we need to work it out. We need to work hard and make sure that the people will be the ones who will be able to share and benefit from working together.
