Life in Manila....
From today's South China Morning Post....
MANILA
Shadow economy
ALAN ROBLES
To be an office worker in this country, you need two sets of qualifications. First, there are the required skills: literacy, language fluency, ability to use office equipment, attitude. Second, there are the survival skills, probably best summed up in the question: how well can you sell clothes to your fellow employees?
Actually it doesn't have to be clothing. It can also be food, jewellery, books, toys and even small appliances. The important thing is to be able to sell something in order to eke out a living and survive on the typically low salary you get. At a clinic I visited, a receptionist who was offering shirts and native delicacies to her co-workers said it best: "Times are hard."
...
Office workers - overworked, underpaid, frequently commuting appalling distances through abominable traffic to get to their jobs - are the proletariat who help keep the economy afloat. The most common expression for their condition describes how a chicken eats: isang kayod isang tuka - "one scratch of the ground, one bite". In other words: hand-to-mouth. They survive through sariling sikap, or self-initiative: taking extra jobs, working long hours and buying and selling things. There was the famous story of public school teachers so hard up they sold female underwear and dried fish to their students.
...
I doubt our top officials have the same worries about making ends meet. I just can't see a cabinet meeting where the president says: "Today we're going to discuss how to best implement poverty programmes, but first - anybody want to buy this lovely brassiere?"
Complete article here(requires subscription)
MANILA
Shadow economy
ALAN ROBLES
To be an office worker in this country, you need two sets of qualifications. First, there are the required skills: literacy, language fluency, ability to use office equipment, attitude. Second, there are the survival skills, probably best summed up in the question: how well can you sell clothes to your fellow employees?
Actually it doesn't have to be clothing. It can also be food, jewellery, books, toys and even small appliances. The important thing is to be able to sell something in order to eke out a living and survive on the typically low salary you get. At a clinic I visited, a receptionist who was offering shirts and native delicacies to her co-workers said it best: "Times are hard."
...
Office workers - overworked, underpaid, frequently commuting appalling distances through abominable traffic to get to their jobs - are the proletariat who help keep the economy afloat. The most common expression for their condition describes how a chicken eats: isang kayod isang tuka - "one scratch of the ground, one bite". In other words: hand-to-mouth. They survive through sariling sikap, or self-initiative: taking extra jobs, working long hours and buying and selling things. There was the famous story of public school teachers so hard up they sold female underwear and dried fish to their students.
...
I doubt our top officials have the same worries about making ends meet. I just can't see a cabinet meeting where the president says: "Today we're going to discuss how to best implement poverty programmes, but first - anybody want to buy this lovely brassiere?"
Complete article here(requires subscription)
posted by Madame Chiang at 6:02 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home