Previous administrations and education department officials attest to the fact that a big number of licensed teachers are working abroad as domestics. In 1998, for instance, then President Fidel Ramos launched a program to lure back teachers who had become domestic helpers promising to improve their pay scales.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s first education secretary, Raul Roco, went to Hong Kong to convince about 300 overseas workers, mostly domestics, to return to their old teaching jobs in the Philippines.
Only a few may have taken the bait, making government efforts pointless. The worsening employment scenario, stagnant salary and other economic woes are even more pushing some 2,800 Filipinos farther away and fly abroad everyday, among them teachers destined to work as househelp or domestics.